My brother seems to not care about his online privacy. He registers to services too easily without pondering, he’s not outraged we need a fucking account to use a vacuum cleaner, it seems he doesn’t care about all the potential risks of having videos of our indoors saved in a cloud. I don’t have strong arguments to convince him that privacy matters other than “if someone gets that, you could be in trouble” and “it’s like having someone watching you h24” and so on. How can i persuade him?
Ask him for his passwords, and when he says no, ask him to explain why. He’ll surely have things he doesn’t want you to access. Then explain that other people he doesn’t even know have that access right now, because he keeps thoughtlessly giving away digital access using apps and linked accounts.
If he gives you his passwords, log into his stuff and print his browser history or something. Stick it to his fridge.
easy: “why do you wear clothes?”
I remember a discussion with a friend of mine while I was probably droning about privacy, surveillance capitalism, etc.
She politely listened then said she didn’t really mind or care.
I feel quite strongly about this and as I know she is pretty smart was somehow surprised by her reaction so I tried to illustrate my point more directly. We were in a bar so it went a bit like this :
- A: so, can I ask you how much you earn?
- B: yes, sure
- A: can I tell others here in the bar
- B: I guess
- A: can I instead sell others that information so that they can try to sell you goods and services?
- B: no
So my point was that she associated a problem with privacy with a friend who might be a bit curious. When she started to see it as a systematic commercial endeavor that was unfair to her, she did change her mind.
Maybe a short thought experiment like this could help your brother see what’s troubling to you?
Privecy & security go hand in hand.
It depends on the kind of risks you have in mind.
Are you worried about someone hacking an account, stealing passwords and committing identity theft? If so, the stakes are pretty high, but the probability is low as long as your brother takes care of updates and passwords. Also, avoiding shady software and sites helps too. I prefer to call this category security, but it certainly has privacy aspects too. IMO online security should be a high priority.
However, if you’re mainly concerned about Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Google and other companies collecting data about you, the situation is very different. I call this thing privacy, and the risks are smaller, but the probability is very high.
When it comes to security, you just need to show what has happened to other people who screwed up and made themselves an easy target. However, privacy is a bit trickier. Appreciation of privacy is a more philosophical matter, since the practical side of it isn’t as tangible. If your brother doesn’t have certain values, principles or philosophy, it’s going to be difficult to convince him that privacy matters.
If your brother already takes good care of online security, but ignores privacy, you could talk about the way companies use your data. Focus on the ethical side of these practices. If not, forget about privacy and focus on security instead, since that should always be the higher priority.
