Are You/Are You Not Concerned About Data Collection?

[jiyeon]

Hi, so a friend and I had a discussion earlier regarding companies collecting our data and how we felt about it.

 

There was the camp that is concerned about data collection and actively thought about what sorts of things was acceptable to be collected, that's me. Then there was the camp that isn't concerned as there are reasons data collection is happening for things such as tailored advertisements, this was my friend.

 

So I decided out of curiousity to open up the floor for discussion on why people might/might not be concerned about data collection and what it means for our digital livelihoods.

 

I liked the point my friend gave regarding targetted advertisements, if they actually had been relevant to me, that is. I use Amazon very frequently but no internal or external advertisements have ever gave me something relevant, so I can't work out what's so inaccurate about my particular advertisements when Amazon collect this data anyway.

For the record, I am okay with data collection as long as it's relevant to my own digital footprint and the companies are not profiting off of my internet usage, such as X company gathering my information such as my location and selling it to Y company for their personal usage.

 

So I wondered, are you guys concerned or not concerned about data collection from companies, and why? What bits of information are you okay and not okay with giving, and are you concerned about a particular company that might be using a piece of information for malicious intent?

 

 

Also, please don't involve Governments too deeply into this if you do mention a particular country's legislation, no political debates please.

[79wjd]

It sounds an awful lot like you're trying to collect my data

[PlayStation 2]

Look, I'm an open book. If Google doesn't have my info, some random people I talk to on Discord do.

If I were so concerned about it I'd not use the internet at all because I'm that type of guy.

[SenKa]

The only thing i really care about is collecting in depth data of my personal life such as phone calls.

 

I don't have anything to hide, just feels creepy

[samcool55]

I really don't like data collection because things can get into the wrong hands and ruin lives.

Knowledge = power. To explain this simple (and maybe a bit OTT): In a war, if you know everything about your enemy (planned attacks, used tech, formations, everything), you can prepare for that, counter it and have a much bigger chance of winning.

 

These days companies know probably more than we do about ourselves, which is really scary.

Tbh personalized ads are like the least of my worries and amusing as well sometimes.

Like, you know what they know, and sometimes you get ads that just make you go "what the hell?", like today I got an ad for dog food, I don't have a dog! I don't even want one. I'm a cat person and I have a cat. It really confused me.

 

The kind of situations I'm worried about is stuff like "hey you smoke, your health insurance is going up because you are a higher risk" or even getting more expensive insurance because your friends or family smokes. Just to be clear this is only a thing in china so luckily not where i live but, that's some scary stuff!

[Bananasplit_00]

I dont like it, im not VPN level avoiding tracking but i will block all your fucking trackers as well as i can and block any third party cookies. My data is mine, you dont get to rip it to flip me on the fucking black market of data hoarding

[XR6]

Yes, I'm concerned and to be honest it makes me feel uncomfortable knowing that my data is being collected.

I always use an ad blocker and a VPN, I also block trackers and third party cookies. Why? Because I want companies to know as little as possible about me.

 

[Sauron]

I don't care about people knowing my name and address, that's publicly available information. I don't want them tying that information to my online habits - in fact I don't want them to know my online habits at all. This is why I don't give out my name or exact location on this forum.

[Angshu]

I secretly watch gay porn. Will Google know about this? 

[Bananasplit_00]

4 hours ago, Angshu said:

I secretly watch gay porn. Will Google know about this? 

if your gay porn site of choice has one of those share on facebook or whatever things at least they will know

[kelvinhall05]

I feel like I'm going to get flamed for having my own opinion, but if collecting my data (and allowing me to delete it later here) can provide me with a better user experience, I'm all for it.

[Princess Twilight Sparkle]

I really wasn’t until 2015 when my PSN was compromised and they charged a lot of crappy games to my profile.

 

It took some time getting my account back and under control and it made me make a different password for everything.

[Video Beagle]

While I checked "I'm concerned", that really needs a level amount....because yes, I'm concerned, but not very.

I came to grips with the "there is no such thing as privacy" a long time ago.  I personallly take good use precautions, but I'm also not fooling myself about what info is out there.

 

(I must say I'm pleased I'm answering following Trixie and Twilight)

[Arika]

To an extent.

 

I'm very careful about what i put online and what information I put into any personal device. While my screen name is an indication of my real name, I have no social media with any information on it that can be "used against me" in any kind of doxxing attempt or any "link" to be made back to actual personal information.

 

In my job, i have full accesses to our customer's financials, and while we're a big enough institution, we're small fry compared to the "big" data harvesters like Google, facebook and Microsoft, and even with the amount of people i have access to, they are just numbers on a screen, i also don't have time to be looking through people's accounts, i absolutely guarantee that my "information" to them is nothing more than white noise to any person that might be viewing it which would be "looked at" by bots anyway, not actual people.

[TetraSky]

I'm mainly sitting between Yes and No.

 

For some things, I really don't care what they collect. (general data, like country of origin)

But for others, things that are personally identifiable... I detest completely. That's why I usually am careful about what I post online.

If I wanted to have everything about my life harvested for the profit of some assholes, I'd have a facebook account.

[duncannah]

depends on the type of data and the company. 

[captain_to_fire]

18 hours ago, Angshu said:

I secretly watch gay porn. Will Google know about this? 

• Do not use Google Chrome

[captain_to_fire]

I don't mind data collection as long as it is anonymized before sending out. Believe it or not, telemetry data is useful.

[Teddy07]

I do not care about data collection and spying.

[Bramimond]

I'm trying a fair bit to mitigate data collection, but it gets harder and harder every year. I may quit certain things on the Internet entirely. Like everything you need one of the big browsers for. Not sure if that even helps all that much, knowing that most modern CPUs have secret operating systems baked in that can monitor and modify everything on your system no matter what operating system you are using. I think we've already lost the war on general computing before most people realized it was even happening. We live in very difficult times as far as privacy is concerned.