Is Privacy a Lost Cause?

[Shin]

5 minutes ago, Epiphany_Inspired said:

@Huginn Everything you said was amazing! I hope it helps @-T8 too! Awareness may be one of the keys that can keep the door open... I really like that analogy about the Facebook record keeping, it's perfect! As someone that's actually experienced someone following me around recording everything... it particularly hits home!  That said, because of my personal experience, I am possibly able to understand what that actually feels like more than posing it as a hypothetical to others...

Being anonymous, online, or off, is often interpreted as hiding.... and this is extra tricky because there can be misrepresentation as well (think of people with crushes on, or virtually dating, someone using another person's photo, often a different age or sex)... so many people are hurt, even rapped this way... so building that trust you spoke of will be hard...

I can think of this in my own life...and laugh now... but it really fucked me up at the time... a gay friend was using an icon photo on a social site, I thought he was a new friend, and I developed a crush... I got super mad when I found out I was "deceived", even though he had no intention to do so... he thought I knew it was him... just a misunderstanding... and because I do love him so much, I can see how that could happen quite easily...lol.... anyway... a picture that's not my actual, somewhat current, face still doesn't feel right, but I hope to get to that place of either trust or indifference with the pictures too  
 

Reading you last posts, I highly doubt you won't make it

Edited February 4, 2018 by Shin

[Huginn]

@Epiphany_Inspired I understand where you're coming from. I think it's also good to keep in mind the positive connections that can happen when we trust and how they really outnumber the negative cases. The Internet has brought us so much positive connectedness. The negatives just usually, unfortunately take the headlines in our minds.

I think as human beings, we must have more bias towards trusting than not trusting in the end. Otherwise the wars will just go on.

 

Edited February 4, 2018 by Huginn

[-T8]

@Epiphany_Inspired @Huginn

You guys have definitely made some points that resonate with me. To start, I agree that privacy is not the right word to describe the issue and that it really is more of a control of information. I can see how much information is being collected and the majority of the time that information is being exploited by corporations for their financial benefit. What concerns me is the number of people who don't understand the power that is just given to these big data companies. Over the past few years the amount of power that has been given to these companies just blows my mind and this power is continuing to grow exponentially. If you look at today's society I believe that a lot of addictions, diseases and systemic problems are caused solely based on corporations ability to manipulate how people think and act. Their ability to control the population is driving people to over-consume to a point where it seems that humans are just seen as disposable means to generate profits. 

By the sounds of it both of you have gone through quite a few precautions to limit the amount of data that can be collected on you. I am curious to know if you feel that have limited yourself by not taking advantage of the technology available, or have wasted too much time worrying about your personal privacy? Have the benefits of protecting your data outweighed the amount of energy it takes to limit the amount of data you put out there?

It might be pessimistic, but it seems as if its not even worth trying to control your own personal information because of the sheer volume of information that others are willing to give up. Hence the title "Is privacy a lost cause"....The only way that I can see this improving is whenever the majority of the population wakes up and learns to look at the facts and understands the effects that big data is having on your everyday life.

I am trying to move past this as it kind of just seems like I am worrying about the future too much. But i feel that this is a systematic issue which needs to be improved for society to move forward.

[Epiphany_Inspired]

@Huginn So true!

@-T8 After some thought... I feel that perhaps we may need to educate ourselves, and access real intuition to find out what we are actually ok with.... then make choices based on those things...

For example: if you were play wrestling, making out, or engaging in a protest type activity you would likely have strong unspoken boundaries of what you are, or are not, comfortable with in these situations... because a number of these privacy concerns are "new territory", we may need to go with gut instincts when things don't feel right... and discover what is really going on under the surface, without falling into too much paranoia, or not enough gratitude, etc...

Warning- rant- coming: I remember the smart meter thing just screamed "big brother" to me, in the worst sort of way... suddenly half the people I knew seemed to be ok with a corporation knowing exactly which appliances we used and when etc... it was a little too like those scary sci-fi movies where the characters are always watched in their home... I was one of the few people that locked my meter up and literally had to physically guard against the constant trespassing attempts to put one of these (radiation emitting) monitoring devices at my home! Even others that seemed to care at first, made little effort to fight it ...this happened at least a dozen times with my friends:... Friends: "I'm a tenant, there's nothing I can do" Me "write a fucking letter to your landlord, express concern that you do not want this"!!! None of the friends ever bothered to write a letter, instead, they just became numb to the issue...and there are so many more examples within the online realm too... I find it bizarre, that people openly say they are really not ok with these invasions, but their addictions seem to get the better of them or something... 

ok... ranting is over ...lol....

[Huginn]

@-T8  Indeed. The way I see it, throughout history, we've been collectively trying to get more and more control over how we live our lives. Once there were kings, now we have democracy, or appearance thereof. In earlier days, we could more easily see how the balance of power lay. It was right in front of us in external reality. The king definitely got more power, wealth etc. to do what he wants (although 'some' raising of consciousness must've been needed to imagine that things could be different). Now this power struggle has entered the territory of the mind, hidden by complexity and shallow consciousness. Because of this tendency towards obscurity, of the "center" of power making itself as invisible as it possibly can, it makes total sense that most people don't concern themselves with it. It's inconvenient to do so, they've so many more fun things to do instead, things that benefit them. That's all part of the veil.

So when we talk about the benefit between ignoring the issue of privacy/information control and concerning oneself with it, we have to talk about what really matters to us in this life. What are our values and what do we really want? Some people are more conscious of their real wants than others, and some are mistaken about what they want. I like to believe I'm fairly conscious of my wants. My highest value is Truth, embodying the Truth of my own nature in authentic expression and becoming more conscious of the Truth of myself, reality, Being and certain Truths and real experiences thereof that interest me particularly.

I sense a real threat to that value the way things are going, due to my technological understanding, personal experience of being locked inside "the matrix" of online video games, culture and a limiting belief system, and contemplating this issue back and forth. I must move towards the last matrix. You may ask, what does privacy have to do with that? It's a matter of power. The more you compromise your privacy/information control, the more some less conscious person out there is able to control your mind and behavior. This then indirectly compromises my upholding of my values. The causal chain of it all may not be apparent every time, but that's how the game is played.

Now other people don't care as much. The people I surround myself with will eventually cause some information leaks and so on with poor information control practices. This I realize. It means I must raise awareness and empower them in this area and lead through practice. I can't follow the herd when the truth is so clear in my mind. It takes only one person to start a movement, and I'm far from alone.

This isn't convenient at all, just necessary for me to live my truth. Of course there's some balance that I keep and my practices are far from perfect, but I'm updating them somewhat continuously. This view that I have has been going on for some years now, contributing to not keeping in touch with people on social media and seeming all withdrawn and antisocial therefore. I'm just constantly conscious of what the hell is going on. Blessing or a curse, the blue pill or the red. I'll get all social when I got anonymized end-to-end encrypted communication going with the intended recipient.

@Epiphany_Inspired Yea, I also think intuition is a good way to go. For intuition to kick in though, people need to be aware of the underlying mechanisms of things. What do you think would happen if Facebook displayed a message in their messenger every time they sent a message saying "Your message has been sent to [friend], as well as the people at Facebook, who by the way like to sell your information as they see fit"?