4 ms·

In a weird way it feels like we are more prepared for this in countries like Sweden where your social security number, tax returns, income, credit history, addr

In a weird way it feels like we are more prepared for this in countries like Sweden where your social security number, tax returns, income, credit history, address, spouse, children, company board positions, pet ownership, car ownership and criminal records are public information and easily available. At least we have no illusions of privacy. Someone could start with your licence plate and two minutes later know pretty much everything. Since 1905 you have been able to buy a book every year that listed up to date income and net worth for everyone in your area [0]. Now, of course, everything has moved to web services and APIs. Take a look at the example response from this API for an idea of the information available [1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxeringskalendern https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxeringskalendern [1] https://api.ratsit.se/swagger/ui/index.html#/Person/get_api_v1_personinformation https://api.ratsit.se/swagger/ui/index.html#/Person/get_api_...

dhosek 6y ago
This was part of why author Stieg Larsson never married his girlfriend: To do so would expose her to people who had made credible threats on his life because of his journalism work. Unfortunately, this also meant that she was locked out of his estate after his death.
- blacksmith_tb 6y ago
  Not a Swede, but wouldn't the logical solution to this problem be a will that named her specifically?
  - dhosek 6y ago
    His death was premature. I imagine he meant to do so, but died before he could.
sib 6y ago
Note to self: never move to Sweden. (Although I lived there as an exchange student for a summer many years ago...)
- 5cents 6y ago
  Why not? Sweden is a great country on a lot of measures. Shouldn't quality of life count more? Or access to free, high quality health care for you and your family? Free education for your children? What if that kind of openness is in fact improving the society? Norway is very transparent as well. It seems irrational to deny oneself and ones family the opportunity of moving to some of the best countries in the world (on a lot of measures) due to principle. I guess the matter is trust. It is hard to become more trusting as adults, and yet, society works much better when the baseline of trust is higher.
  - sib 6y ago
    Well... for me, there's literally no reason my neighbors (or any other random person on the internet) needs to know all that information about me or my family... It's funny how much energy there is behind things like GDPR preventing a company from transferring people's email address to a partner, when, by comparison, this is much more sensitive information. I don't think that having free healthcare or college requires baring private financial and other information to any nosy busybody who wants it.
    - 5cents 6y ago
      Thank you for the nuances; my main issue with the comment was dismissing Sweden as an option for good, which seemed quite unproportional. Sweden is a good country to live in, regardless of their policy on sharing this kind of information Personally, I think openness about taxes, fortune etc. is good to check that everyone contributes as they should. But before it was protected by login, at least in Norway, there was a (minor) problem with maps showing which streets had the wealthiest inhabitants (the police didn't like it)
  - neolog 6y ago
    It's not free healthcare/education, it's paid with taxes. Why would the government publishing my personal information help me? Or is it that publishing my personal information would help other people more than it would harm me?
PeterisP 6y ago
The key part there is that in such an environment it is obvious for any company (and their customers) that "something your spouse or mom would know" is not an acceptable security measure for anything, so it does not get used. But it does not have to be a tradeoff, we could easily have companies avoid such security questions even if privacy is still mostly a thing we get.

dhosek 6y ago

This was part of why author Stieg Larsson never married his girlfriend: To do so would expose her to people who had made credible threats on his life because of his journalism work. Unfortunately, this also meant that she was locked out of his estate after his death.

blacksmith_tb 6y ago
Not a Swede, but wouldn't the logical solution to this problem be a will that named her specifically?
- dhosek 6y ago
  His death was premature. I imagine he meant to do so, but died before he could.

sib 6y ago

Note to self: never move to Sweden. (Although I lived there as an exchange student for a summer many years ago...)

5cents 6y ago
Why not? Sweden is a great country on a lot of measures. Shouldn't quality of life count more? Or access to free, high quality health care for you and your family? Free education for your children? What if that kind of openness is in fact improving the society? Norway is very transparent as well. It seems irrational to deny oneself and ones family the opportunity of moving to some of the best countries in the world (on a lot of measures) due to principle. I guess the matter is trust. It is hard to become more trusting as adults, and yet, society works much better when the baseline of trust is higher.
- sib 6y ago
  Well... for me, there's literally no reason my neighbors (or any other random person on the internet) needs to know all that information about me or my family... It's funny how much energy there is behind things like GDPR preventing a company from transferring people's email address to a partner, when, by comparison, this is much more sensitive information. I don't think that having free healthcare or college requires baring private financial and other information to any nosy busybody who wants it.
  - 5cents 6y ago
    Thank you for the nuances; my main issue with the comment was dismissing Sweden as an option for good, which seemed quite unproportional. Sweden is a good country to live in, regardless of their policy on sharing this kind of information Personally, I think openness about taxes, fortune etc. is good to check that everyone contributes as they should. But before it was protected by login, at least in Norway, there was a (minor) problem with maps showing which streets had the wealthiest inhabitants (the police didn't like it)
- neolog 6y ago
  It's not free healthcare/education, it's paid with taxes. Why would the government publishing my personal information help me? Or is it that publishing my personal information would help other people more than it would harm me?

PeterisP 6y ago

The key part there is that in such an environment it is obvious for any company (and their customers) that "something your spouse or mom would know" is not an acceptable security measure for anything, so it does not get used. But it does not have to be a tradeoff, we could easily have companies avoid such security questions even if privacy is still mostly a thing we get.