| | |
|
YuShiFirstPaper 5 - 02 Jun 2010 - Main.YuShi
|
| |
| META TOPICPARENT | name="FirstPaper" |
|---|
| |
<
< | (Revision 1 - Ready for Review) | >
> | (Revised - Ready for Review) | | | Apathy, Vigilance, and an Amorphous Fear | | | An Amorphous Fear | |
<
< | While a sizeable portion of my peers do take a reasonable amount of precaution to secure their online information, the number of people who fall into the two groups described above is too significant to ignore. It is my contention that there is such an incoherence of response to online privacy concerns within a similarly-educated group because people do not truly have a precise understanding of what the threat is. The danger is not as tangible as that of writing one’s name and social security number on a sheet of paper and taping it to a lamp post, and it is certainly not as real as a thief breaking into one’s house and taking confidential files. Instead, for most of us we learn of online privacy dangers through warnings from the media and anecdotes from friends. This creates an almost mythical kind of fear, an amorphous fear that is always lurking, but one that can be dismissed as easily as it can be sensationalized. As a result, like the myriads of ways in which children react to ghost stories, people respond to the online privacy threat in ways that reflect their “gut feeling” rather than any reasoned process of thought. | >
> | While a sizable portion of my peers do take a reasonable amount of precaution to secure their online information, the number of people who fall into the two groups described above is too significant to ignore. It is my contention that there is such an incoherence of response to online privacy concerns within a similarly-educated group because people do not truly have a precise understanding of what the threat is. The danger is not as tangible as that of writing one’s name and social security number on a sheet of paper and taping it to a lamp post, and it is certainly not as real as a thief breaking into one’s house and taking confidential files. Instead, for most of us we learn of online privacy dangers through warnings from the media and anecdotes from friends. This creates an almost mythical kind of fear, an amorphous fear that is always lurking, but one that can be dismissed as easily as it can be sensationalized. As a result, like the myriads of ways in which children react to ghost stories, people respond to the online privacy threat in ways that reflect their “gut feeling” rather than any reasoned process of thought. | | |
What Can We Do? | |
<
< | I think the most effective way for one to curb this amorphous fear and deal with privacy concerns in as rational of a manner as possible is simply to become more informed. Media reports about online privacy vulnerabilities, especially those appearing in mainstream sources not specifically catering to a technical audience, are often sensationalized and not descriptive. Hence when one sees a headline saying that Facebook Applications pose a grave threat, one should attempt to learn why exactly it is a threat. How do these Applications get your information? Where do they get it from? By understanding the mechanisms through which a person’s information could be pilfered, one is better able to take reasonable precautions instead of resorting to extreme measures. Paranoid behavior comes from hearing sound bites such as “you leave a track of everything you do online” without attempting to understand the scope of such statements. In the Facebook/EIP example above, if those who deactivated their profiles took time to think through the absurdity of law firms using the students’ friends to spy on their profiles, then perhaps they would simply have “privatized” their profiles instead of temporarily deactivating their account. | >
> | I think the most effective way for one to curb this amorphous fear and deal with privacy concerns in as rational of a manner as possible is to become as informed as possible. Media reports about online privacy vulnerabilities, especially those appearing in mainstream sources not specifically catering to a technical audience, are often sensationalized and not descriptive. Hence when one sees a headline saying that Facebook Applications pose a grave threat, one should attempt to learn why exactly it is a threat. How do these Applications get your information? Where do they get it from? By understanding the mechanisms through which a person’s information could be pilfered, one is better able to take reasonable precautions instead of resorting to extreme measures. Paranoid behavior comes from hearing sound bites such as “you leave a track of everything you do online” without attempting to really understand such statements. In the Facebook/EIP example above, if those who deactivated their profiles took time to think through the absurdity of law firms using the students’ friends to spy on their profiles, then perhaps they would simply have “privatized” their profiles instead of temporarily deactivating their account. | | | | |
<
< | I think this essay is peculiarly modest. You
don't have much trouble seeming right given the straw men against
which you contend. And the only insight you derive from the tour
on which you go is that we should expect people to respond vaguely
to threats that aren't made personally tangible. Yet people seem
to have acquired an awful lot of paper shredders in the last
decade. And even if your social psychology is correct it is not
very surprising. Maybe in revision you could give the essay a more
ambitious goal. |
|
| Revision 5 | r5 - 02 Jun 2010 - 01:54:47 - YuShi |
| Revision 4 | r4 - 08 Mar 2010 - 05:05:16 - YuShi |
|
|
|
This site is powered by the TWiki collaboration platform.
All material on this collaboration platform is the property of the contributing authors.
All material marked as authored by Eben Moglen is available under the license terms CC-BY-SA version 4.
|
|
| | |