Comment by gentlerain
12 hours ago
The next frontier is to maintain 'limited privacy'.
That's denying most culprits the opportunity to use the collected data against you.
Like always on VPN, turning off personalization, ad guards and using open source products where possible.
> The next frontier is to maintain 'limited privacy'.
The real next frontier is to maintain one or more carefully curated personas with various companies to optimize how they treat you. Wear shabby clothes and fake beards when grocery shopping so that the cameras think you're poor. Security will be all over you, but the digital price tags will give you lower prices as long as you don't have your cell phone on you and they can't get a good face ID because then they won't be able to pull up your actual income level.
Create and maintain specially crafted social media accounts filled with fake hobbies and AI generated photos but never express an actual opinion on anything at all so that future employers can see you have a "presence" but they won't see anything that might disqualify you a job, like your political views.
Buy multiple high/low end devices and rent a closet or PO box in both rich and poor neighborhoods so that you can selectively hand out a mailing address that will make you appear either poor or well off.
Pay someone to take your cell phone out them on friday night so that you can appear more socially active otherwise you'll be flagged as anti-social which can impact employment, raise your health insurance rates, etc.
It's a bit like physical security of your house - could someone break into my house, not easily but it's a house not a bank vault. Keeping our gate closed and having a large dog (who is actually very friendly) about the place probably keeps the vast majority of possible thieves away.
That's still a bit on the obsessive side. The reasonable position is the same as it always has been in the real world too:
- Don't volunteer your intimate details left and right;
- Feel entitled to deny requests for unnecessary data (and advocate for such rights if you're in position to)
- Otherwise don't sweat it, because you can't actually control what others know about you, you never could
The trouble with this is the baseline is getting to high. You've got age verification coming, google rolling out phone verification for websites, etc. Once that is rolled out, accepted and "easy" it will be used for everything important "for security" and then everything not important because hey, you were doing anyway?
The reasonable position will be slow marched into hell same as the rest of them, just a few steps behind.
I feel like this is the best compromise. Thanks for wording it.