

Ask YC: As a user/developer, do you care about privacy? - BenS

I've always worried about online privacy. Recently, I've begun to feel like I'm in a shrinking minority. Every day, I see people trade even their most sensitive information for convenience or fun. Ambivalence towards privacy might be partly due to ignorance, but it's also possible that people just don't care about it.<p>As developers, do you try to protect the privacy of users? Do you care about your personal privacy enough to NOT use a really cool web service? Do your users click your privacy policy of ask you about it?<p>As an aside, I predict:<p>- Extremely aggressive behavioral targeting will be adopted by all major ad networks including Google. Less than 0.1% of people will opt out of 1st or 3rd party cookies if they have the option.<p>- At least 20% of the most successful social network applications will make their money by exporting and reselling personal information. Aggregation will provide little anonymity for good data miners.No social networks will aggressively enforce its T&#38;C's, including FB.<p>- Consumers will continue to assume that a well designed homepage is a proxy for security. (e.g. Mint).<p>- Online and offline companies (e.g. credit cards) will regularly provide information for government investigations.
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run4yourlives
This really depends on what you consider "private".

Do I give a damn that double-click knows that I was at reddit for 20minutes
and then came to YC for an hour prior to quickly checking facebook? No, not
really.

Do I care that facebook will let advertisers know I live in Vancouver BC? Not
all that much, unless they start spamming.

Do I care that anyone knows my cc info? Damn right I do! Do I care that
companies provide info to government? Yes, again I do, although I might not be
aware of this.

I don't think it's that people aren't concerned, it's just that there are
different levels of concern. People freak if a company looses SIN/SSN's, but
not so much if they distribute email.

You're just witnessing the effects of falling out of sync a bit with the
degree that is the norm.

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gaika
I'm already a little bit used to it.
<http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2008-06-20/>

Privacy link is clicked a lot on my startup's page. People still care.

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nostrademons
As a user, I don't really care. I figure I don't have any privacy anyway, so I
might as well get over it.

As a developer, I care about not being evil. And part of that is understanding
that some users have different beliefs than me and it's wrong to force my
standards on them. I don't have a problem with opt-in mechanisms that destroy
your privacy though, eg. lifestreaming or social networking.

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ra
I think caring and awareness are two different things.

Those who are aware definitely care. Unfortunately, a large percentage of the
population don't understand the value of the information they share so freely.

