Is there a way you could prevent this? Yes, if you care about privacy and not let someone build that database in the first place.
It's not only/always the NSA that we need to worry about.. You can already see this in some sense. A flight ticket could cost more if you look for it using a Mac instead of a PC. The road to creepy data mess is not that far.
Yes, regulations on insurance pricing factors and on use of personal data.
Your solution is worse than the problem.
Does it make sense to ask "Why is fascism bad?". At a philosophical level it makes sense to ask this, but most of us would agree that freedom is desirable, because it allows people to develop their life project and be happy, while allowing other people to be happy (or at least try to be). Fascism is the totally opposite of freedom, therefore most of agree that fascism is bad.
Is there a good reason to undermine freedom in this case? I don't think so.
Some people may find that giving up their privacy for convenience is worth it, others, like me, would think the opposite, but we individually make the decision to use or not use Google, Facebook, etc. "Being taken advantage" is subjective.
Even if it was generally considered to be "malicious" and "being taken advantage of", you're arbitrarily twisting the rules of the game, to favor one group of people (the "users") and impair others (those that create the service). You may say: Yeah, but those being impaired already have millions of dollars and those being "protected" are good people. So, you decide who is "good people" and whose freedom doesn't matter? Should millionaires have less rights than poor people? Laws should correct for the amount of money/power people have, is that fair? I don't think so.
> Limiting freedom is bad unless you have a very good reason to do so.
The argument that they should be free to do so because otherwise we are otherwise limiting freedom is not convicing. Consider, for a moment, whether we have a right to privacy. Restricting person A from violating the rights of person B is generally not considered a limit on the freedom of person A. For instance, we generally do not talk about laws against theft limiting the freedom of a person to take whatever they want. If we do not have a right to privacy, then preserving privacy may still be a "very good reason" to limit such freedom.
> Some people may find that giving up their privacy for convenience is worth it, others, like me, would think the opposite, but we individually make the decision to use or not use Google, Facebook, etc. "Being taken advantage" is subjective.
Most people do not realize they are giving their privacy away or if they do, do not realize the extent of it. Privacy policies are intentionally obfuscated (and these public policies only exist because of regulation). People have expectations of how their data will be handled and PR departments do their best to suggest that their expectations align with reality, but theose expecations are never aligned with reality.
Even if this is how it actually worked, it would only work that way until it no longer works that way. Eventually you may find yourself uninsurable if you refuse to install a tracking device in your vehicle.
If you want the lower rate, you let them track you with the app. If you don't, you call up Geico or whatever and let them decide based on your age and zip code.
Chrome Sync has nothing to do with this.
I also think all of us are terrible at determining the value of our privacy and it's an asset we don't miss until it's gone. It's for that reason that I think the sale of privacy is something we can't leave up to unregulated industry because not all parties have good information on the goods they are exchanging.
So, if an insurer can identify that you have a greater risk than your friend, in perfect competition you would pay a higher rate. No insurer with perfect knowledge of risk would allow you to pay less than that, because they’re expected return would be negative.
In that case the companies will compete to give you competitive yet higher than others quotes to YOU(as they can see).
It's not about "lack of ability to advertise", it's about someone being able to heavily manipulate the perceived availability of competition (which is much more important than the real availability of competition). And that someone is the same someone that helps the companies manipulate the price (hint: it's Google).
It's a lot easier to maintain web servers if they are only using the http protocol and not https. Does that mean I should not enable https? Same thing with letting Google start to categorize and selling your profile to organizations. It might be nice now, but in 5-10 years what will the landscape look like?
It's ultimately your choice to determine how much of your information you are willing to give up for the sake of convenience but you should think a little more about what the future could look like and start putting in some safeguards to protect yourself in the future.
I think that's a totally different issue and I think it's harmful to this discussion to bring such an issue in.
The case of http vs https is not one of user security vs user convenience; it's user security vs sysadmin convenience.
There's a different tradeoff with giving user's more security which is less convenient for you to maintain, and you typically should do this (this is stuff like https, supporting 2fa, etc).
The better comparison is sharing data with third parties to provide users conveniences. This is a comparison between user's data security and user's convenience. That's the tradeoff being discussed.
Bringing in unrelated things like http vs https will only serve to muddy the waters and damage your point.
Alternatively if the people not in power have a revolution and murder all of us working in finance... well shucks I guess that could be something I'd regret.
Waving around arbitrary threats doesn't help if the people you're preaching to view them as low likelihood.
Incognito windows are not a realistic alternative, because that adds more limitations.
I think in a post-Snowden world that is a pretty bold assumption.
No one had a problem with Facebook collecting tons of meta data, until one day, it mattered. One more link in the chain that ties users down, everyone is complacent while slowly becoming a product.
Other search engines are good enough to work if a user's unhappy, and Google hopes that users never have a reason to notice that.
Many privacy-conscious people make all the same tradeoffs that everyone else does; like you, they've decided that what they're giving up is worth what they're getting in return. The problem with this change is that for many people there is no benefit and they were not asked, so they feel they are having something forcefully taken away from them without getting anything in return.
If the experience is "so nice" why are so many people outraged? The data suggests this is a terrible experience to look up and suddenly see you've been auto-logged into a browser without your consent. Terrible UX.
Whenever you think that many people are outraged and someone else claims that it's not the case, the logical conclusion is that you or both of you are in bubbles.
Is it possible that you, a hacker news poster, are in a bubble whereby you've heard the opinion of tech-savy people, but not the opinion of the average mom who doesn't even realize the auto-login is the reason her android phone is now suggesting browser history from her desktop?
But then, who should you be listening to about whether to vaccinate your kid? Jenny McCarthy on social media or a bunch of people who each had to spend several years of effort to be called a doctor? Obviously, go with the better user experience.
“Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different from saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say. – Edward Snowden”
Maybe I'm foolish, but I have this hope that a shift from the "make money off of mining your data" business model to something else, perhaps like crypto/tokens enable, might just enable the convenience you speak of, without forcing me to sell my information because everyone else didn't care to value their data.
Being able, in three clicks, to re-open on my computer a tab I closed on my phone a couple hours ago.
For me that's it.
It's the reason why I can search for "prefecture Melun" on my laptop, then jump in the car, open up maps on my phone, Start typing "1" and watch it suggest "12 rue de Gambas, Melun 77320", which happens to be the address of the Melun prefecture.
That sort of thing happens for me every day, and i think it's kinda cool. Google knows this stuff about my life and will suggest it at useful times. If I open maps on the day I have a flight, ferry, or hotel reservation, it'll just assume I want to navigate there (because it read one of my emails) and suggest it for me.
So yeah, I guess I should be outraged and worry that they'll start targeting me for ads or ratting me out to the NSA or something. But thus far they haven't.
It's just that they can offer all this cool stuff if they connect your devices. And in 2018 that involves using a database. Personally, that does not concern me all that much.