[bonoboTP]

People worry about "real people" knowing their private stuff, eg a family member, acquaintance, colleague, neighbor etc peeking into their DMs, because these people can impact one's actual life, social life, reputation, job, marriage, etc. They don't care if some faceless corporation has their data in some database with a billion other peoples similar data, as long as that data can't get into the hands of real flesh-and-bone humans that they see with their two eyes in real life as opposed to theoretically maybe existing and doing something nebulous ly nefarious in some scifi future dystopia.

[lurk2]

I’m sure I’m preaching to the choir here, but the data belonging to a faceless corporation (or even a government agency) can be dangerous even if the corporation does not have any nefarious intentions; this is because both the data and the corporation can eventually be compromised by malicious actors.

[bonoboTP]

I personally am careful like others around here, but I know how normal people think. All anybody can list are vague nebulous future consequences while the benefits are immediate and concrete. You need to point to concrete bad things that happened to real people close to home, eg friends and family, for them to care. Not one anomalous case across the country, but something that has reality in their own real lives. I've tried telling people about privacy issues and it's harder than telling people to stop smoking or eating crap food, or to abstain from sex etc. It's seen as theoretical, abstract moral preaching. Privacy advocates can never point to real things that affect average people in big enough numbers. It's a bit of a catch 22. If the thing is too rare, it seems far fetched. If it's too common, it's seen as "if so many people are affected then I can just blend into the crowd". Meaning, since everyone is careless about privacy around them, at worst they are all going down together. But that in itself seem quite far fetched.