I think the average person cares about privacy either in a localised context or a pathological context. They don't want their neighbours to see inside their ho

I think the average person cares about privacy either in a localised context or a pathological context. They don't want their neighbours to see inside their house, they don't want all their friends know what some of their friends know about them, and they might not want their spouses to know what sort of porn they watch. Simple enough. They also understand they don't want to live in a DDR era surveillance by a central government, one that is obviously a bad and violent actor. But tracking of data on the internet and refining personal information to build a profile, an identity is sort of impersonal. It's not local or pathological. There is no such context for privacy (or the lack of it). The person doesn't have a relationship towards these unknown surveying and tracking parties and, conversely, they really don't know these people in the social sense. People might realise that their social media posts, shopping habits, and browsing habits might be collected under a profile somewhere but for the most part that's just a bunch of data somewhere: there's no evidence that this profile would change the behaviour of other people who are relevant in the person's life. Being a programmer, I have to admit I don't know myself how bad things could turn, for instance, in my own case. For the most part, even I don't see any immediate threats with Google or Facebook having some bits of my personal life stored online or Amazon having a good history of what sort of things I've so far needed. What keeps me from being liberal in sharing stuff is merely my nerd instinct: I just know I don't want to expose too much surface to the outside unnecessarily. Hence incognito windows, Firefox containers, ad blockers, uBlock, and other stuff. But fifteen years of Google and ten years of Facebook have not really had any unwanted influence in my real (i.e. physical) life. I also grew up in an internet where pseudonyms were the norm so it's always an exception to give a service my real name. Data breach and identity theft? The risk is fairly low and the latter happens even without breaches into online personal data. Custom pricing? I hunt for prices in private windows so that I'm less likely to trigger an interest for an item, and potentially higher prices, in the browser that has links to my personal profile. Sensitive information? I don't think my blood test results or list of surgical operations would stand out much: surely I have things in that area I don't want all my friends or relatives to know but worrying about that would have to mean the information I have stored on Google and some medical providers' profiles would have to become publicly accessible and my friends or relatives would have to know to look for them and then identify my records to find out. That's a long bridge to be built, I don't think it's a particularly realistic worry. Do I have something to hide? As much as I hate that argument and while there surely are things I don't advertise and my friends don't know about they could just ask and I'd probably tell them. If a stranger sat next to me and told me something about my life I thought only I knew is both unexpected and a bit hypothetical. The privacy would now have become local and I'd probably be more interested in the social context, i.e. what would the stranger want to approach me like that and what would be the price. On the other hand, if all he has is information then all he can do is reveal it. I don't think any of that information would be detrimental. Uncomfortable, maybe, but not the end of the world. And I'll be dead anyway in fifty years. Connectivity surveillance? I'm not particularly worried that my ISP or government will see who I've called. They aren't interested in me personally. My frieds might be but the chance of them getting access to that information is slim. Again I don't like the idea of logging connectivity but I personally don't see the downsides either. Most of the stuff online is also quite transient. The value of me buying a particular tool ten years ago is only so much. I'll block ads anyway. I am perhaps an average person in that sense. I know there's a strong sense of "not right" in collecting so much information, and as a programmer I know how data can be massaged into information but I can't see credible enough threats on a personal level in that area to change much of even my own behaviour. I'm not surprised that average people aren't all freaked out about tracking and online privacy issues.