[sspiff]

> The second school of thought is individual responsibility. Users should take steps to protect their own privacy on a case-by-case basis, in the same way they look after their own home security or personal safety. > I personally believe in user responsibility for personal privacy and security, where you can't and shouldn't depend on policy to protect you and that all users should be aware of the issues and actively educated on how to protect themselves.

The problem is that while home security and personal security is something everyone understands on a basic level, the impact of personal information being public or being available to others is not.

Many people believe that whether other people, companies or government agencies or advertisers know some details about their private life doesn't matter much, but many don't understand the potential impact. Perhaps insurance policies go up inexplicably because you googled backache or headache remedies a few times. Perhaps certain political affiliation or opinions can be outlawed and put you on watch lists in the future (think of the McCarthy era in the US).

Many people also don't realize how much information can be derived from your network traffic, even if it is not explicitly present in the data itself.

Educating people on this kind of complexity and nuance is much more complicated than explaining what a fence does, or how curtains work. It would be expensive and hard, and many people won't understand the need for it anyway.

[wcummings]

The other problem is that most peoples' home security is not effective against anything except casual intrusions (i.e. drunk people accidentally entering the wrong house).