[mirkules]

Without intending to invoke Godwin's Law, I think what happened in WWII is a good lesson in dangers of overexposing your private life. Before WWII, Germany used "tax deductions" to entice people to reveal their religion to the government. Data which was later used to identify Jews during wartime.

Nobody is saying you need to unplug your machine from the internet, but just that because something doesn't impact you today, might not be true tomorrow. If you decide to run for office in 10 years, for example, you can bet your location data will become relevant (and it's not that far-fetched that the other party will try to obtain that data - reference the IRS email scandal).

The point is to minimize the aggregation of your data, to limit the impact it will have on your life once it leaks. After all, you never know who will get a hold of all your data once a company goes out of business (fir example).

[imgabe]

The problem in WWII was not that the government had a list of who all the Jews were. The problem was that there was a government that wanted to kill all the Jews. If the latter is true, they'll find out the information they want one way or another. Hiding a list does not solve the problem, which is that you have elected genocidal maniacs to your government.

[mirkules]

Your line of thinking hinges on an optimistic view: "As long as X doesn't happen, we're fine". But what will you do when X does happen? You'll be completely unprepared for it.

I prefer to take the "hope for the best, prepare for the worst" approach: if something bad were to happen, I would have a better chance of not being impacted.

[imgabe]

No, my line of thinking is more like "If X happens, we're fucked regardless of whether we have privacy or not, so we need to focus on not letting X happen"

If an insane genocidal dictatorship comes to power, you will be impacted, unless you're on the side of the dictators.

[mirkules]

I'll bet you top dollar that's not what Jennifer Lawrence is thinking right now. She's not thinking "It was inevitable that someone will get my photos from iCloud". Instead, she's thinking "I should have never put my photos on iCloud in the first place".

Hence the point of this thread: don't expose more information than you need to.

Edit: just as I typed this, the top story details the perils of data theft, exactly the point I'm trying to get across here: https://www.nikcub.com/posts/notes-on-the-celebrity-data-the...

[rybosome]

Not having data which would incriminate you to a party which will misuse it is something of a pyrrhic victory, but I still see your point. It would be preferable to have no parties which would misuse this data, but if such a party does exist then you would be better off remaining anonymous. As with all risk analysis, there's no clear answer. Deciding whether or not using a service which tracks such data is a consideration of the convenience gained, sensitivity of the data, propensity of the parties in play to respect the privacy of this data, potential for future incrimination, etc.