
What Would You Pay to Keep Your Digital Footprint 100% Private? - apress
https://hbr.org/2017/12/what-would-you-pay-to-keep-your-digital-footprint-100-private
======
olivermarks
Answer to headline: Nothing. We should follow Estonia's lead IMO.

[https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/12/18/estonia-the-
di...](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/12/18/estonia-the-digital-
republic)

'A tenet of the Estonian system is that an individual owns all information
recorded about him or her. Every time a doctor (or a border guard, a police
officer, a banker, or a minister) glances at any of Piperal’s secure data
online, that look is recorded and reported. Peeping at another person’s secure
data for no reason is a criminal offense. “In Estonia, we don’t have Big
Brother; we have Little Brother,” a local told me. “You can tell him what to
do and maybe also beat him up.”'

~~~
astura
How is this much different from the Fair Credit Reporting Act+HIPAA in the US
other than extending some of the information covered?

[https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/pdf-0096-fair-
credit-r...](https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/pdf-0096-fair-credit-
reporting-act.pdf)

>Access to your file is limited. A consumer reporting agency may provide
information about you only to people with a valid need -- usually to consider
an application with a creditor, insurer, employer, landlord, or other
business. The FCRA specifies those with a valid need for access.

>You must give your consent for reports to be provided to employers. A
consumer reporting agency may not give out information about you to your
employer, or a potential employer, without your written consent given to the
employer. Written consent generally is not required in the trucking industry.

~~~
boomboomsubban
It applies to things besides your credit score and your medical records for a
start.

The FCRA isn't comparable. It's allowing a private agency to collect data
without your consent, and then give it to those with a "valid need" without
your consent. Only employers have some limitations.

------
jack6e
> _What Would You Pay to Keep Your Digital Footprint 100% Private?_

The form of the question belies the real problem with our current laws around
digital data and privacy: the assumption that digital privacy is not a right
and thus requires extra payment to maintain.

The question should be: what would you charge a company to access X% of your
digital footprint?

~~~
TheCoelacanth
Thanks for helpfully demonstrating that no one reads past the headline. The
article barely even hints at the idea that you should be paying in the literal
sense for privacy. It is focused entirely on what seemingly useful things are
currently enabled by giving companies that engage in Internet tracking free
rein with user's data. According to the author, the "price" you will have to
pay for privacy is:

> 1\. No more free services.

> 2\. No more personalization.

> 3\. No more instant gratification.

------
atomicfiredoll
This really does feel firmly hypothetical.

Well I do want my information private, it would have to be 100%. What's the
point in paying Facebook or Google for privacy when every other website I
encounter, even if for something as simple as shopping or reading a personal
blog, is working to build and share a profile of me?

I also can't help but feel some amount of distrust seeing companies like
Microsoft ask $200 for a product, then inject ads and force telemetry. Paid or
not, if companies can sneak in some way to increase the bottom line, some
will.

This isn't even to mention that they've clearly drank their own Kool-Aid about
personalization being a "feature."

To me, this feels like an issue issue that business isn't suited to deal with
and that requires regulation.

------
zipwitch
I would pay the same that I would pay to avoid being robbed on public roads: a
small but reasonable amount in taxes to support law enforcement and safety, or
as much as neccessary to leave and move somewhere with safe roads and the
fundamental principles that create them.

------
sincerely
>(2) No more personalization.

This is the opposite of a downside. Please, companies, let me pay you to
remove personalization from, say, Google search results. The upsides are
basically non-existent for a consumer.

~~~
intopieces
What is the practical difference between a de-personalized Google and just
DuckDuckGo?

~~~
abakker
All the other services from google, really. If DDG had alternatives to email,
docs, spreadsheets, youtube, etc, then it would be more equal.

~~~
boomboomsubban
Why should those be tied to your search engine?

------
confounded
I don’t accept the author’s trade-offs. I can have plenty of gratification and
personalization on free services like reddit, HN, and Wikipedia, all under
semi-disposable pseudonyms which accumulate data, but which I don’t feel
threaten my personal privacy much, if at all.

It’s Facebook and Google’s fussiness about real names and identities (and
desire to become something akin to ultra-invasive credit ratings agencies /
the next Equifax) that’s the _new_ part about commercial surveillance, and
that creates these trade offs.

~~~
tabeth
You're mistaken if you think pseudonyms somehow will protect your privacy.

Your privacy will be compromised. It's inevitable.

~~~
pinebox
If pseudonyms don't matter, why does Facebook have such a hard-on for
collecting real names (even trying to get people's friends to rat them out)?

No, you can still do a lot with compartmentalization. Throwing in the towel
just because "on a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops
to zero" is just looking at the glass as half empty.

~~~
tabeth
I didn't say they didn't matter. I said they won't protect your privacy, which
they won't.

Also, what's up with the fictitious quote?

~~~
khedoros1
> Also, what's up with the fictitious quote?

The quote's real (Chuck Palahniuk _did_ write it, after all); the character
who said it was just fictitious. They were just using it to say that you're
being overly pessimistic.

------
paulus_magnus2
The same as in real-world for not be stalked.

Stalking is unwanted or obsessive attention by an individual or group towards
another person. Stalking behaviors are related to harassment and intimidation
and may include following the victim in person or monitoring them.

------
zbruhnke
I thought about this in great depth with a company I was working on a few
years ago. I built it as a Financial data API and "Oauth for finance" but the
ultimate idea was always - "Can I make it so that users can glean real value
from owning their own data".

Put another way - "What would a world be like where a user could simply sell
their data to the highest bidder for the right to buy their business?"

This could mean a lot of things to me it meant don't show me ads unless I ask
for them and then I'll agree to take offers from all of these providers and
I'll choose the best offer to give my business to.

It is the reason I honestly don't have Alexa or google home or something else
in my home.

Because ultimately I believe the system that wins should be one that let's me
choose and that gives me value by tying me into any number of providers I wish
and not by letting one large conglomerate into my home with only the ecosystem
of their choosing.

Ultimately I'm not sure if enough people think like me but if you do feel free
to drop me a line I'd love to chat!

Email is in my profile and I'll be in SF alot more starting in January but
also currently reside in Los Angeles

------
jasonkostempski
No more "free" services: Not true, advertising can be done without tracking
it's only what it is today because it was allowed to happen. Affiliate links
were perfect.

~~~
soared
Advertising is 100x more effective with data. If you want advertising without
targeting data you'll end up with a 10x more ads on every page and each will
be more intrusive than the last.

~~~
jasonkostempski
A legally required camera mounted to my chest would would be a 1,000,000,000x
more effective. That should never be allowed to happen. Luckily, I know how to
make my computer block the digital equivalent of that, but it could have been
the default for everyone if standards had prevented the current insanity from
ever exiting.

------
nathan_long
> It is the ease and convenience to which we have become so accustomed that
> keeps us from choosing more private (but also more clunky) user experiences.

Often true, but this is a bad example:

> Sure, you could turn off your geo-location settings for a taxi app so that
> it stops tracking your every move, but the hassle of having to manually
> enter your current location every time you want to use it may feel like too
> much of an effort to be sustainable.

"Tracks your every move" and "needs you to manually enter your location"
aren't the only two options. You could have "summon a taxi" button that
transmits your current location to a given service one time.

The crucial thing is that _the user should have control of what they share
with whom_. That's what privacy means.

~~~
greggman
iOS (and android?) have the option to only share gps while the app is running.
so for the taxi app example you're sharing no more info than you need to
really. turn it on, call a cab, cab arrives, close app. The only info shared
is your pick up location. Of course the cab itself could share your
destination but I don't see how you'd prevent that as that info is also
relevant to the taxi

~~~
norlys
That doesn't solve the problem that Google still constantly knows where I am
(as long as my OS is Android). Wasn't there an article hinting that our
smartphones even track GPS when it's disabled? Also, I'm quite surprised to
live in a time where having to manually type an address is considered a
problem.

------
readhn
I would not pay a lot (because if i had to pay a lot i would simply reduce my
digital footprint) but i would pay something.

I'd say 5-10 bucks a month to keep my digital tracks in my own cloud or on
devices i physically control and no one else.

------
oliwarner
The real question is why we so happily give away personal, even sensitive
information to companies that explicitly —perhaps not explicitly enough— say
they exploit that data to monetise their service. When you demand zero-cost
email, social networks, search engines, IP-telephony, etc, you have to expect
that any —if not all— data you hand over is going to be used _against_ you.

That's most traditionally the Amazon/Ebay model, guiding you into buying
something you don't need, or a SKU with a higher ticket price, but as we're
seeing recently, there are also parties spending money to insidiously
influence the sociopolitical news and opinion you get to see.

Both Facebook, Google and Twitter all boast about their ability to target
adverts and "promoted" posts.

And it's not enough to pay for a search engine, or shunt over to a social
network nobody uses. If you want free of this, you have to make painful
choices, like getting you and yours off Facebook and Google and onto services
either you control or you know aren't being mined and adjusted. Getting the
hell away from Windows as it tiptoes around privacy-hell.

Unfortunately, because people have neither the appetite or technical know-how
to run or audit their own social networks, what seems more likely is we're
just going to chase people off these "liberal" platforms onto ones with even
stronger tints.

------
UncleEntity
> Privacy Badger detected 19 potential trackers on this page.

Trying to decide if that fits in the irony category or not...

------
soared
For those commentors who think digital privacy is a basic human right and
should be protected by their goverment: Does that mean you'd knowingly
bankrupt facebook, google, gmail, youtube, etc? You absolutely cannot assume
that could just seamlessly switch to a payment model and everything would be
fine.

In Colorado they simply cannot convince the public to pass a law allowing
liquor/beer stores in grocery sales. The public doesn't want to knowingly
condemn every mom and pop liquor store because safeway would easily put them
out of business. Do you really think the public would knowingly condemn
facebook, twitter, google, youtube, etc.?

(Fb/google/etc are not mom and pop, but the comparison still holds some merit)

~~~
khedoros1
> Does that mean you'd knowingly bankrupt facebook, google, gmail, youtube,
> etc? You absolutely cannot assume that could just seamlessly switch to a
> payment model and everything would be fine.

In the practical sense, I think that the hard part would be coming up with a
workable transition plan. I think you're being melodramatic, though. There'd
be massive disruption, but I don't suspect that Alphabet or Facebook would
just slide under the waves.

> Do you really think the public would knowingly condemn facebook, twitter,
> google, youtube, etc.?

Hell no. People love all those things. I like them myself, despite their
obvious problems.

> The public doesn't want to knowingly condemn every mom and pop liquor store
> because safeway would easily put them out of business.

All of the chain grocery stores near me carry beer, wine, and all varieties of
spirits. We've still got mom+pop liquor stores all over the place. 2 are
within a 10 minute walk of my condo. In Colorado, I think the big problem
wouldn't have been the chains carrying liquor, but the sudden change in the
status quo if they were allowed to now.

------
eveningcoffee
I would pay absolute nothing. That is my right that is being abused.

But I would for example pay small fee for an article using anonymised payment
method (I do not find subscription model viable).

------
synicalx
If you're paying a third party to keep you private, then in paying them you've
already breached your privacy because they need to know who you are in order
to;

1\. Accept your payment (arguably bitcoin solves this, but it has to be
purchased, and also accepted by the vendor).

2\. Work out what your digital footprint is

------
baxtr
It really depends on what people could potentially do with my data. Maybe I’m
too naive right now, but what’s the worst case? (Assuming we’re talking about
corporates. I don’t think it’s reasonable to suspect it’ll be possible to pay
governments to keep data private)

------
singularity2001
It all depends on the likelihood of risk:

If we were certain that hackers will get hold of all our online data and use
it to completely compromise our identity and company we SHOULD pay hundreds of
thousands of Dollars!

If we are worried that our wife will find some compromising information on
Facebook then we should pay nothing and instead explain to her.

If insurance companies will use our data to raise their fees our protecting
should be worth at least the difference.

If trump or some evil genius inside the NSA somehow turns the US into a
dictatorship and use our data to to send our children to concentration camps
(quite unlikely but not impossible) we should run to the bank and ask for as
much credit as possible to save our privacy.

So to average the above risks we should probably pay >2% of our income for
privacy. That would be 10% of military expenses.

------
sharemywin
The problem is one sided contracts, black box, no transparency, one size fits
all solutions. The whole point of free markets is choice but that's not really
what's evolving.

------
frogperson
Who exactly would I be paying for the privilage?

------
matte_black
The blood of patriots is the only price worth paying for the right to privacy.

~~~
24gttghh
The only price worth paying? Wouldn't an entity paying _you_ to access _your_
information be more worth it to the individual? Or maybe politicians not
getting re-elected for not supporting digital privacy be a better "price" to
pay?

