
Most Americans Continue to Have Privacy and Security Concerns, Survey Finds - elsewhen
https://www.ntia.doc.gov/blog/2018/most-americans-continue-have-privacy-and-security-concerns-ntia-survey-finds
======
zigzaggy
This must be a case of boiling the frog slowly. I probably qualify as overly
concerned with privacy (some might say obsessed). But even I am feeling the
fatigue that comes along with the daily news of data leaks, and stories about
untrustworthy leadership (public and private). Or maybe, because of my views,
I am more fatigued? Either way, it's exhausting. And I understand why people
would just succumb to it all.

I'm rambling, I guess. But I am disappointed in the results of this study.
Once I had faith that people would wake up over time. But that faith is
slipping away...

~~~
ImNotBeingADick
A lot of unneeded info that is now required.

I'm surprised email and facebook doesn't demand your SSN.

~~~
r00fus
Im pretty sure that a) demanding SSN/DL would cause a mass exodus that would
have a bottom line impact for FB b) FB probably already have it through other
data sources matched with your FB history

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dang
Submitted title was "Americans' Concern with Privacy and Security Are
Declining". Please don't editorialize in submission titles. This is in the
site guidelines:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
oliwarner
The guidelines also say:

> please use the original title, _unless it is misleading_

The submitted title there was far closer to the data than the page title.

~~~
dang
I had that same question, but it's not obviously the case. The article
addresses the decline, saying that it's mostly that people aren't worrying so
much about identity theft. That sounds plausible, since identity theft is not
a top-of-mind issue among the privacy-conscious commenters of HN either.

That plus the fact that the article isn't obviously tendentious makes it
likely that the title was chosen by the author to represent the survey
findings carefully. If so, it's unfair for an HN submitter to invert it. What
would be fair is to post a comment to the thread pointing out the possible
discrepancy.

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oliwarner
That was not the article I expected to read after seeing that title. Did the
headline not read the rest? (Edit I am talking about the current title, not
the old one).

It's _technically_ accurate but in just two years the data shows a massive
_decrease_ in every area of concern bar one (which remained static). Headline
should be that "internet users are give up remaining vestiges of privacy
security and tact".

What's NTIA's goal here? To get us to the point where we fearlessly do
anything online? Trust our big-data overlords? Being a little sceptical, a
little fearful of these privacy-nuking business models is not unhealthy.

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sonofblah
"However, the 2017 survey showed a decline in households reporting concerns
and avoiding certain online activities compared with the 2015 survey, which
first asked these questions. The proportion of online households reporting
privacy or security concerns fell from 84 percent to 73 percent during this
period. Similarly, the proportion of online households that said privacy
concerns stopped them from doing certain online activities dropped from 45
percent to 33 percent."

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wpdev_63
Imagine if there were some sort of legal apparatus to prevent company
employees and 'other' agents from invading your privacy.

It should be trivial for 99% of companies to anonymize and scramble user data
so that employees do not have access to it. There's no reason for it.

~~~
jerf
"It should be trivial for 99% of companies to anonymize and scramble user data
so that employees do not have access to it. There's no reason for it."

It isn't: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De-
anonymization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De-anonymization)

I advocate for in practice behaving as if it is not possible, and simply
saying that production data must be restricted. Exceptions can be made for
certain types of aggregate data, but one of the lessons of a lot of people's
work is that it's really, really easy to cross the line back to the data being
identifiable again without you even knowing you did it.

Also, I don't mean that wikipedia link as a complete explanation per se, but
the starting point for a journey, if you want to take it.

