Asklemmy

44149 readers

1278 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
!lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

160

Why is online privacy so important? (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by BigBootyBoy@sh.itjust.works to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

49 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Firstly, I'm not against privacy or anything, just ignorant. I do try to stay pretty private despite that.

I wanted to know what type of info (Corporations? Governments? Websites??) Typically get from you and how they use it and how that affects me.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] sentient_loom@sh.itjust.works 12 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Why do you need curtains on your windows?

To make sure the whole world isn't just a window for the HR department. I can have "dissident" views, or just talk trash with my friends, and not get fired since it wasn't at the office.

To make sure real dissidents (from totalitarian countries) can express their political views.

So a lady can send her husband feet pics without some secret agent spy gawking at them too.

So I can share my family's secret BBQ sauce recipe with my cousin without Arby's stealing it (they have eyes everywhere).

But these are all specific things. The truth is that we simply cannot trust institutions with all our data. I don't need a reason for privacy. They need a reason to have my info. Security is a legit reason to seek citizens' info, generally, but you should need a specific security-related reason to access a specific person's data.