UKC

I’ve been surprised today by a common theme in three threads on UKC (a user leaving facebook , don’t post wedding photos on facebook and I’m being forced to have a smart meter). I guess that there is an underlying privacy concern to all three... but really, paranoia??

Do some/lots of people feel this way?
Is this just whining for the sake of it?
Or a mismatch between advancing technology and receding user acceptance?

Cheers
LD

In reply to Lurking Dave:

How many UKC members does it take to change a lightbulb?

In reply to stroppygob:


643

1 to change the lightbulb

642 to argue about who actually changed the lightbulb, why they changed the lightbulb and whether or not TPS is HVS.

In reply to Rampikino:

I was thinking more along the lines of;

None! We don't like change!!"

In reply to Lurking Dave:

It's whining for the sake of it.

The more information 'they' gather on 'us', the less use it is.

In reply to Rob Exile Ward:

Hmm, curious. I can't tell if you are being sarcastic. Your post would make sense either way. I'm going for not-sarcastic, am I right?

In reply to Lurking Dave:

I'd like to add another question, if I may. Why is privacy now commonly seen as a quaint and slightly contemptible concern?

In reply to Lurking Dave:

it depends. If you consider that whatever you put online in theory can be viewed by someone else and you decide you're not bothered about someone seeing your wedding photos then there's no problem. I put photos up online and don't care if someone sees them. I would however be wary of putting any evidence of committing a crime (such as taking drugs, though I don't do anyway, not my thing) in case someone I didn't want to see them did. Same for rants such as about work with trackable details.

but there's a lot of people that seem to think along the lines of "I once looked at a news site, the CIA must know everything about me, have read every word I've ever put in an email, care, and will be on the way now to kidnap me!"

...or at least somehow force you to buy products you didn't want. It seems that's a big one, "oh no advertising will be targeted to me!". Guess what, it always was, it's just done so a bit more accurately that it used to be. You still don't need to buy anything you don't want to.

In reply to Lurking Dave:
I think the thing with digital data is that
1. It hangs around forever
2. It's copy able, so you don't know where it will end up
3. Your use is all logged somewhere

I don't like to put too much stuff on the inter web as everything ends up linked together and potentially public. What I want to share with my family, I might not want to share with work colleagues, or with future friends who I haven't met yet. What I think now, I might not ink in the future.
It doesn't take much research to find many, many instances of people caught out by innocently putting information on the we without realising the full consequences of doing so...

In reply to Rampikino:




You forgot the other 2 who don't think the lightbulb should have been changed, and are going to chop down the new monstrosity before anyone gets ideas about changing bulbs elsewhere

In reply to Lurking Dave:


In my experience there are two main groups.
Those of a more luddite persuasion and then those who work in the technology industry or related industries and tend to have professional paranoia about it.
Facebook dont help themselves with their relaxed approach to scientific experiments and ethics.

In reply to Lurking Dave:

Paranoia is a much misused word and strictly is a medical condition.

I think the street phrase sums things up succinctly:

"It's not paranoia when they really are watching you."

In reply to Lurking Dave:

Paranoia not so much - cautious yes.

I had a call from a well known online money company yesterday which went like this...

Hi i am calling from XYZ, can you confirm your e-mail address linked to your account please.

Hi, how do i know you are calling from XYZ, can you confirm that for me first and also what is this call regarding.

Sorry i cant give you information about the call till you confirm you are the account holder.

How do i confirm you are from XYZ?

Call us on 123...

but you gave me that number, you could be giving me anyone's number!

oh...

In reply to Lurking Dave:

Whem my daughter married we had a big group photo in front of the church, when we looked back at it, there was an uncle missing who was there at the back when the photographer was fussing around before taking it. When we asked around , someone remembered him ducking out at the last minute , and as he was on the end at the back , no one else noticed.

Question is, did he just know that it was going to end up on Facebook (which it did)and did not want to be shown on there as some people don't, or does he perhaps have something else to hide !

In reply to Jim C:


Perhaps he thought it was one of the old panoramic slit scanning film cameras where you could run around from one end to the other and be in the photo twice...

In reply to Lurking Dave:


'Ere! I left facebook cos it was crap for me, not cos I'm worried too much about my personal data.

Now if you'll excuse me, I've got to reshape my tin foil hat, it got dented when I was running from the government. :-p

In reply to wintertree:


I was musing more around him having a second family, a secret lover, or running from the law, that kind of thing
It would be boring if he was just caught short.

In reply to tlm:


I too was caught out , I put my favourite photo of my 3 girls at 12,9, 4 on Facebook, for friends and family to see abroad, and the middle daughter found out within seconds,and stormed up to me demanding I remove it immediately.

I was bemused as to why , only to be told by my wife later that she had some 'puppy fat ' in that photo, and she was worried her boyfriend might see it ! ( shock horror)
She was 25 at the time !