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Leaving the house compromises my physical security. Your comment is easy and throwaway and I think you probably already what I'm about to say but life is a bal

Leaving the house compromises my physical security. Your comment is easy and throwaway and I think you probably already what I'm about to say but life is a balancing act between security and utility. The web and history are littered with examples of things that a "hacker mentality" would have baulked at in theory. AirBnB, Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Uber. All of these things would have triggered the line "Identity/Physical security means nothing to you does it?". And yet, for many people, they are more than worth the risk involved. We live in an age where it's accepted that perfect strangers should rent our house or drive our car and yet it seems odd that we should allow a liveried delivery man access to our house. How bizarre.

DerpDerpDerp 13y ago
To be fair, many of the people using those services only poorly understand the involved dangers, and many of the people pointing out it harms security, don't.
waterlesscloud 13y ago
"We live in an age where it's accepted that perfect strangers should rent our house or drive our car" Well, no. We live in an age where a vanishingly small percentage of the population does these things.
- garethadams 13y ago
  Based on Airbnb's trends[1], the only way the number can be "vanishingly small" is if an even greater number of people are deliberately stopping these behaviours. Where are you seeing that happening? [1]: https://www.airbnb.co.uk/annual https://www.airbnb.co.uk/annual
  - pjc50 13y ago
    That page says 300,000 listings, versus ~300m people in the US, makes 0.1%. That's not a large percentage; you could find a greater number of people who believe the moon landings are faked.
angersock 13y ago
That's quite true, but for many of those we're starting to see the pushback, however gradual, on such invasive services. It's pretty funny to watch. As for the renting house/car bit...that's far from widespread (for better or worse).
BlackDeath3 13y ago
>Leaving the house compromises my physical security I'll give you three guesses as to where I go when I do want physical security. Hint: it rhymes with "my own goddamn house". >Your comment is easy and throwaway and I think you probably already what I'm about to say but life is a balancing act between security and utility. And as far as I'm concerned, I've reached my balancing point. Well, that may not be entirely true (the local lockbox thing sounds groovy), but giving some dude from Amazon a literal key to my home unbalances that. >The web and history are littered with examples of things that a "hacker mentality" would have baulked at in theory. AirBnB, Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Uber. All of these things would have triggered the line "Identity/Physical security means nothing to you does it?". And yet, for many people, they are more than worth the risk involved. I don't know about all you hip SV folk, but I almost never use any of the things you've mentioned above, though I realize that specifics aren't really the point here. If you'd like to go ahead and give Amazon your home key, by all means, go ahead. I've opted out of Facebook (shadow profiles notwithstanding) and I'd likely opt out of this as well. If this were an opt-in sort of agreement (and I won't assume that it would be), then it's A-OK with me. And by the way, the "baulked at in theory" line doesn't really do anything for your particular argument. I could say that about anything, really, but it's not terribly convincing. >We live in an age where it's accepted that perfect strangers should rent our house or drive our car and yet it seems odd that we should allow a liveried delivery man access to our house. How bizarre. Perhaps you live in that world. I own neither a house nor a car, and if I did I'm fairly certain there would be minimal stranger activity within either of them.

DerpDerpDerp 13y ago

To be fair, many of the people using those services only poorly understand the involved dangers, and many of the people pointing out it harms security, don't.

waterlesscloud 13y ago

"We live in an age where it's accepted that perfect strangers should rent our house or drive our car" Well, no. We live in an age where a vanishingly small percentage of the population does these things.

garethadams 13y ago
Based on Airbnb's trends[1], the only way the number can be "vanishingly small" is if an even greater number of people are deliberately stopping these behaviours. Where are you seeing that happening? [1]: https://www.airbnb.co.uk/annual https://www.airbnb.co.uk/annual
- pjc50 13y ago
  That page says 300,000 listings, versus ~300m people in the US, makes 0.1%. That's not a large percentage; you could find a greater number of people who believe the moon landings are faked.

angersock 13y ago

That's quite true, but for many of those we're starting to see the pushback, however gradual, on such invasive services. It's pretty funny to watch. As for the renting house/car bit...that's far from widespread (for better or worse).

BlackDeath3 13y ago

>Leaving the house compromises my physical security I'll give you three guesses as to where I go when I do want physical security. Hint: it rhymes with "my own goddamn house". >Your comment is easy and throwaway and I think you probably already what I'm about to say but life is a balancing act between security and utility. And as far as I'm concerned, I've reached my balancing point. Well, that may not be entirely true (the local lockbox thing sounds groovy), but giving some dude from Amazon a literal key to my home unbalances that. >The web and history are littered with examples of things that a "hacker mentality" would have baulked at in theory. AirBnB, Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Uber. All of these things would have triggered the line "Identity/Physical security means nothing to you does it?". And yet, for many people, they are more than worth the risk involved. I don't know about all you hip SV folk, but I almost never use any of the things you've mentioned above, though I realize that specifics aren't really the point here. If you'd like to go ahead and give Amazon your home key, by all means, go ahead. I've opted out of Facebook (shadow profiles notwithstanding) and I'd likely opt out of this as well. If this were an opt-in sort of agreement (and I won't assume that it would be), then it's A-OK with me. And by the way, the "baulked at in theory" line doesn't really do anything for your particular argument. I could say that about anything, really, but it's not terribly convincing. >We live in an age where it's accepted that perfect strangers should rent our house or drive our car and yet it seems odd that we should allow a liveried delivery man access to our house. How bizarre. Perhaps you live in that world. I own neither a house nor a car, and if I did I'm fairly certain there would be minimal stranger activity within either of them.