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?
Some time ago, concerned with toxicity on their World of Warcraft forums, Blizzard Entertainment decided to implement a “RealID” system which would attach the customer’s real name from their records to their forum post. In a sort of “self immolation” protest to show Blizzard how absolutely terrible the idea was, myself and a few others posted our own names willingly before the new system was implemented. It was predictably bad as you might imagine and the plans were scrapped entirely.
You can’t. As more generations are born into a world where 24 hour a day surveillance, constant data tracking, and a monthly subscription for literally everything are the norms the expectation of any kind of privacy will sound like something from a history book.
Soon it will seem odd to people that anyone wouldn’t want every thought and action to be tracked and recorded by our corporate overlords. People who try to maintain any type of real privacy will be seen as misanthropic at best or highly suspicious at worst.
If they agree that Trump/Republicans are fascist, ask them why they think it’s an acceptable risk to allow the government to construct the most pervasive and advanced surveillance state that has ever existed for fascism — a system so advanced it would make Himmler cream his pants — why build big brother so all they have to do is simply take over, turn a key, and use it against the world?
If they’re insane and think Trump/Republicans are the good guys, repeat the above but swap out the perpetrator for liberals/trans/immigrants, or whatever “other” is the flavor of the week.
If they’re not American, ask them what they think will happen if the world’s strongest ever superpower — a kleptocratic failed state, straddling the knifes edge of fascism — with a secret police who have backdoor access to the tracking device in their pocket, all their data, and all their historic communications — became a fascist dictatorship? … Point out how “woke” they are (sex before marriage, gay marriage, whatever) … and ask them how comfortable they would be if the tens of thousands of people working at the NSA/CIA were converted into fascist “troll farms”, and started using AI and analytics of all their personal data, to unilaterally wage a cyber war on everyone they deem “woke”? Do they think their government or military could defend them from a bad actor that has the ability to hack anyone on Earth… A bad actor who, if they want you out of the picture, just has to remote into your machine, download some child porn, and tip off the local police… Good luck trying to prove your innocence. You don’t even know what most of those words mean! You weren’t even aware that this was a possibility 30 seconds ago!
Honestly, it’s gonna be an uphill battle & maybe a futile one at that, depending on age. I share so many articles & what not w my parter and friends showing them that so and so is bad for your digital privacy. They respond like wow ok I should do something about this 😮…anyway, back to scrolling on Meta apps and buying stuff from ads that are fed to me. It’s not until they click that one wrong ad and compromise their financial info/identity data that they come back and ask what I was talking about that one time re: online privacy 😅😒
Don’t even get me started on ppl who have cameras indoors. Honestly, it’s just really creepy to me that people go back and watch what others are doing throughout the day. It’s funny that some ppl in my circle are so ACAB & what not, yet when I share that their Ring cameras share access to law enforcement they’re like oh wow really? & that’s about it. 🤦🏼♀️
I have had some success using this video to introduce ppl to some real life consequences: https://youtu.be/F78UdORll-Q I think what really helps drive it home is the escalation of tactics & real world ramifications of failing to understand how important privacy can be, not just for the individual, but for our communities/society.
Good luck 🍀! I hope you can find a way to persuade him to take it a bit more seriously!
Find his information in a data breach and log into one of his accounts. Post something to prove it and show him how important it is to care about privacy/security
Holy shit dude! His email has been recently involved in a data breach but i’ve made him change it. I should’ve asked this question before 😄
I actually did something similar to this before. After a breach I torrented the data to query my own creds (old passwords were leaked, from my pre random gen password manager days). I then searched my friend’s emails and messaged them asking them if their password was still “xyz”. I got a lot of “bro, wtf!?!” that day!
Don’t do this. It’s illegal in most countries and could result in criminal charges.
Instead, DM them and ask “Hey, is your password for x still y”? That’s usually enough for people to feel vulnerable and start to take this shit seriously.
Just try to find out his old Xbox comments or wherever the heck he used to post on forums. Make them appear on the Google search with his name in quotes, and tell him that employers or his future date can easily spot his poor behaviour as a part of background check. Use Bing for better results. Google hides some result, but not Bing.
