I love people who don’t understand privacy. “I have nothing to hide” they proclaim loudly. They don’t complain when the home addresses of contributors to a controversial bill or amendment are published in the local newspaper. They don’t complain when published lists of sex offenders appear online. They have nothing to hide – It’s in the public domain so go ahead and publish it!
But when a local paper publishes a list of home addresses of gun owners (White Plains Journal News, Dec 24, 2013), or the sex offender site shows there’s a sex offender across the street and his home value just dropped to zilch, then the story changes.
The reality is all of us have secrets we’d rather not get out. And we trust others to keep them secret – Whether it’s where you drive in your car, how many texts you send every month, what phone numbers you dial most frequently, or even how much Metamucil you buy at your local grocery store. Would you really want that in your local newspaper?
So I love EFF’s list of “Who has your back?” (link)
No surprise that Comcast would fink on you about your surfing habits. And Facebook is in the habit of sharing secrets. But some of the others who collects lots of personal information like Amazon, Apple and Yahoo scare me. And I’m glad I don’t use AT&T or Verizon for my phone. Wow!
