Privacy in Modern Times -- Is it being obsoleted too?

[Binary Blue]

There hasn't really been a thread about this subject to my knowledge.

I just want to know what do you guys think about the status of privacy in these times. Is it going away, and why?

In my experience, privacy appears to be "heading out". For one, there are a variety of new laws (PATRIOT Act, SOPA) and treaties (ACTA) being proposed, and sometimes enacted, that give governments the ability to monitor your communications and every move.

Thanks to social networking sites like Facebook, it's also way to easy to learn everything about a person. While social networking is a good way to connect people, I think that the fact that it encourages people to give more and more information causes people to lower their inhibitions to giving out personal information (often to dangerous levels) and conversely expect more and more personal information from other people.

I've also noticed this in peoples' social interactions. I live in a dorm in a college. People here often treat privacy like it's a crime. They regularly ask each other for details on where they went, what they did, who they interacted with, and sometimes even open up and look into others' bags, even when the bag's owner is holding it. If you do not give them an answer or let them search, they assume you're a drug dealer or some other shady character. Basically they treat real life like it was Facebook. So in a sense, I guess I'm saying that social networking is causing people to lose their sense of privacy.

For example, my parents came to visit me one weekend. My parents and I were in my room (door is closed) restocking my living supplies and clothes. One of my dormmates came by, knocked on the door, and asked me, right in front of my parents, who I had been having lunch with (I had gone out to eat with a friend before my parents came and apparently he passed by and saw me). Needless to say, my parents were shocked. It didn't help when I told them that this regularly happened and that his query was one of the milder questions.

I understand that it's good to be open and to make friends, but there's definitely a boundary between friendly chit-chat and prying into someone's life.

Also, people don't like it when you lock the door to your own room because they think you're hiding something. The funny thing is that the university regularly advises people to do so in order to prevent thefts since there have been many thefts in the last few years, including some where computers, flatscreen TV's, and other (big) expensive electronics get stolen. I can understand that locking the door is a problem when you have roommates. However, I was assigned a room without roommates so I can kind of get away with it.

So what do you guys think? Is privacy going away, and what's causing that to happen?

 

[Foxer55]

Don't get me started...

 

[Shangas]

I'm generally a rather quiet person. I wouldn't say I'm introverted, but I prefer quiet gatherings of friends. I don't like noisy parties with dozens of people. A good feed, a nice drink and some witty conversation.

That said, I do enjoy my privacy. There are some times where you just don't want people around you. And there are times where you just don't want to be asked what you did. Probably because you don't want to tell them, or because you don't see why they need to know.

This is rather tangentical, and I apologise, but when I was in school, a teacher asked my class why sometimes, us schoolboys act so grumpy and don't answer back to our parents when we come home and they go: "How was school"? and a typical answer is "Fine".

Answers given by my friends (which I agreed with), basically ran the gamut of: "It's just an ordinary day; nothing to talk about".

I'm very much against the social networking culture that we have these days. In a way, I think this lack of privacy is something that people bring on to themselves. They share their most intimate details online and they do this voluntarily. They feel the need to...I dunno...'compete'?...with others, about who has the most interesting life, or whatever. They might not have privacy, but it's, in my opinion, more to do with their own lack of wanting/maintaining privacy, rather than someone else taking it away from them.

There are certain things you just don't talk about on the internet. One of them is where you live or how much money you have. I recall an incident...I think it was a year or two ago, now, about a girl who posted a picture on Facebook.

The photograph showed a huge stack of money. As in cash. As in banknotes. All legitimate currency.

Said money was her grandmother's retirement fund. Apparently, granny didn't believe in banks, and had been saving for years. She showed her granddaughter the money as a lesson in frugality and thrift, or something.

Anyway, the stupid girl took a photo of it, and told everyone about it online.

Within a week, her grandmother was robbed.

Now that's an extreme example, but it shows the importance of knowing what should be kept private, and what's okay to share with strangers.

I don't believe in being a sticky-beak. People have their privacy, and they have the right to disclose what details they choose, to those whom they choose to disclose, at their own free will. I don't pry, or at least I try not to, and I would expect others to do the same.

 

[scotrace]

You haven't had any privacy, at all, for a couple of decades. Unless you are Richard Proenneke, your every move is pretty much tracked or trackable, should you become a Person of Interest in any sense, to any agency, at any time.

 

[LoveMyHats2]

Geez, in a college setting, for me, I would tell anyone and everyone I enjoy privacy, and if they could not understand that, they then need to get the "H" away from me. College is a learning place, and what you obtain there first and foremost is an "education". From all indications of things that can destroy a future that is connected with some of the insane things college students may do (some of them not all of them) is to worry far too much about booze and the party life and not enough about education. I would hope for your sake, you are not going to cave into some desire to be so ever "popular" and to be yourself and hold your own values where you know they should be. If other people there don't accept that or respect that, then tell them to go to "H" and move on. Being "popular" or well known with your college chums, is not going to move you down the road of life later, unless you want books to be written about you and your wanting to be famous like Charles Manson.......

 

[LoveMyHats2]

You haven't had any privacy, at all, for a couple of decades. Unless you are Richard Proenneke, your every move is pretty much tracked or trackable, should you become a Person of Interest in any sense, to any agency, at any time.

Yes indeed, that is so accurate. Recent disclosure about even security based companies that existed to provide security having their "data base" hacked is enough to give one the sense that it is next to impossible to stay under the radar now.

To give my take on what happened to privacy, is greed! Government and the "private sector", (no pun intended, either). The major players in world life simply want to control and sell and have all the information to use and become richer.

 

[LoveMyHats2]

Facebook. I am sure many people use it. Not me. The media does not report as much as they could regarding how many people have everything in their life invaded and destroyed due to having a facebook account. The hackers have a wide and vast open range, on facebook accounts. Sadly I will not win any popularity contests making this statement about it, but as much as anyone defends using facebook, when you personally have your bank or other things stolen and you find out the way it happened was due to having a facebook account, well, you took that risk the day you used your personal information to set up that account. The hackers LOVE you for that...LOVE you.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The only way to protect your privacy is to not give out information you'd prefer to keep private. I've never had anything to do with any of the Facespace/MyBook type of sites, and have no intention of changing my mind about that anytime soon. And I don't think anything I do do online would be of any practical interest to any surveillance agency, unless the time comes that they start rounding up people who refuse to be marketed to. Then I'm in trouble.

 

[Binary Blue]

Geez, in a college setting, for me, I would tell anyone and everyone I enjoy privacy, and if they could not understand that, they then need to get the "H" away from me. College is a learning place, and what you obtain there first and foremost is an "education". From all indications of things that can destroy a future that is connected with some of the insane things college students may do (some of them not all of them) is to worry far too much about booze and the party life and not enough about education. I would hope for your sake, you are not going to cave into some desire to be so ever "popular" and to be yourself and hold your own values where you know they should be. If other people there don't accept that or respect that, then tell them to go to "H" and move on. Being "popular" or well known with your college chums, is not going to move you down the road of life later, unless you want books to be written about you and your wanting to be famous like Charles Manson.......

Yeah. Heck no. I don't participate in said stupid activities though I do find some of their actions rather unusual, especially the searching bags thing.

 

[Foxer55]

Shangas,

I'm very much against the social networking culture that we have these days. In a way, I think this lack of privacy is something that people bring on to themselves. They share their most intimate details online and they do this voluntarily. They feel the need to...I dunno...'compete'?...with others, about who has the most interesting life, or whatever. They might not have privacy, but it's, in my opinion, more to do with their own lack of wanting/maintaining privacy, rather than someone else taking it away from them.

The Oooprah syndrome.

 

[Bruce Wayne]

In this day & age there is no such thing as remaining anonymous.

 

[Flat Foot Floey]

I won't share my views on this subject with you!

 

[Binary Blue]

I won't share my views on this subject with you!

And I'm quite OK with respecting that.

 

[Bruce Wayne]

If one can find your first & last name then one can find out where you live, the value of your house. Your average yearly income, etc, etc, etc...

 

[Binary Blue]

The only way to protect your privacy is to not give out information you'd prefer to keep private. I've never had anything to do with any of the Facespace/MyBook type of sites, and have no intention of changing my mind about that anytime soon. And I don't think anything I do do online would be of any practical interest to any surveillance agency, unless the time comes that they start rounding up people who refuse to be marketed to. Then I'm in trouble.

Exactly. Unfortunately, it seems that people are losing this sense of discretion and expecting others to lose it as well.

Also, slightly off topic: I had a teacher back in high school that called Facebook "MyFace".

If one can find your first & last name then one can find out where you live, the value of your house. Your average yearly income, etc, etc, etc...

It's easier (by how much I don't know) in California since we have a public, searchable website that lists the date of birth, location of birth, and mother's last name.

We also have a publicly accessible database for death records too.

I don't know if I should link to them here due to the spirit of this discussion.

 

[LizzieMaine]

A lot of that database stuff you find on Peoplefinders and such sites is wrong. About twenty years ago, a guy with the same last name as me rented an apartment in the same building I was living in. We weren't related in the least bit, but because of these databases I constantly get junk mail addressed to him -- apparently one of these databases assumes because we lived at the same street address he was either my husband or my son. I wonder if he gets mail addressed to me?

 

[Shangas]

Shangas,



The Oooprah syndrome.

The what-what?

 

[John in Covina]

Here is a rule for the online stuff: If there is a product or service you access online and you pay for it you are buying the product or service, however if it is for free usually then YOU are the product being marketed.

 

[Foxer55]

Shangas,

The what-what?

You may not get Oprah Winfry on TV there in Oz. Lucky you.

 

[sheeplady]

If one can find your first & last name then one can find out where you live, the value of your house. Your average yearly income, etc, etc, etc...

Today I went to the county clerk's office and looked up deeds, sale prices, assessment values, and mortgages on several properties back to the 1850s... and thanks to the census records that are publicly available, I could have seen what these people were worth too both in income and property (granted, census records are closed for a time period). I could also look up all sorts of records on people living and dead if I went to the town's clerk office that holds marriage, divorce, and birth/death records.

The only difference between yesterday and today is that yesterday you had to use a phone book and travel someplace to get much of the same information you can get online sitting at home in your chair. I don't believe that increased access necessarily means reduced privacy if that information was always a source of public record. You can't have privacy in information that is inherently public by nature. I don't think the medium by which information is accessed changes if information is really truly public, although I think it is often perceived that if information is placed online (as opposed to in a database in a physical location) that there is a violation of privacy beyond that of having it stored in a way that isn't as accessible. In reality, you never had privacy over that information in the first place (and there is darned good reason for having accessed property values, mortgages, liens, and deeds as matters of public record).

Although online information has made it easier for people to casually check you out (and for the professionals who do it too) there were and are plenty of people checking you out in records that aren't online- I can absolutely guarantee it.