Do you do online surveys?

[Stephen Biko]

You are trading your personal privacy for a few bucks. More power to you. The problem is that few people understand the ramifications of giving away their privacy until it bites them in the sass, at which point it is too late to get your privacy back.

One example - toll road transponders like EzPass. Much easier than paying cash - and frequently cheaper too. The problem is that all the records of your ezpass use end up as a permanent record in their database. Those records have turned out to be a gold mine for divorce attorneys looking to prove infidelity (civil cases only require a "preponderance of evidence" not "beyond a reasonable doubt"). Saved a few bucks up front but those people ended up losing 1000x what they saved in their divorce settlements.

Not the same as filling out surveys and scanning in all your purchases - but it isn't difficult to see scenarios where that becomes a problem too. Lets say you smoke and you fill out a survey about how many packs a day you smoke - maybe sometime in the future your health insurance decides to decline coverage to people with a history of smoking as much as you admitted to in that survey. Or maybe it isn't something so obvious - say you don't smoke but you eat a lot of junk food and in 10 years time the war on junk food has made it politically correct to treat junk food eaters as badly as smokers and you can't get a job because you have a record of eating too much junk food (just like a few hopsitals now refuse to hire smokers).

You can't know the future - giving away your privacy for a few bucks is like opening pandora's box. You have no idea what you are letting loose with your privacy but once it is out there in the hands of amoral corps and their government lapdog you'll never ever be able to put it back in the box again.

For me, the trade-off of a few hundred bucks in hand against who knows what kafkaseque future is not even close to being worth it.

[Marlin]

You are trading your personal privacy for a few bucks. More power to you. The problem is that few people understand the ramifications of giving away their privacy until it bites them in the sass, at which point it is too late to get your privacy back.

One example - toll road transponders like EzPass. Much easier than paying cash - and frequently cheaper too. The problem is that all the records of your ezpass use end up as a permanent record in their database. Those records have turned out to be a gold mine for divorce attorneys looking to prove infidelity (civil cases only require a "preponderance of evidence" not "beyond a reasonable doubt"). Saved a few bucks up front but those people ended up losing 1000x what they saved in their divorce settlements.

Not the same as filling out surveys and scanning in all your purchases - but it isn't difficult to see scenarios where that becomes a problem too. Lets say you smoke and you fill out a survey about how many packs a day you smoke - maybe sometime in the future your health insurance decides to decline coverage to people with a history of smoking as much as you admitted to in that survey. Or maybe it isn't something so obvious - say you don't smoke but you eat a lot of junk food and in 10 years time the war on junk food has made it politically correct to treat junk food eaters as badly as smokers and you can't get a job because you have a record of eating too much junk food (just like a few hopsitals now refuse to hire smokers).

You can't know the future - giving away your privacy for a few bucks is like opening pandora's box. You have no idea what you are letting loose with your privacy but once it is out there in the hands of amoral corps and their government lapdog you'll never ever be able to put it back in the box again.

For me, the trade-off of a few hundred bucks in hand against who knows what kafkaseque future is not even close to being worth it.

So by your logic, I assume you don't use a credit card or check card. You pay full price for things at the grocery store vice using the store discount card. You don't have a cell phone, or cable/satellite tv or ISP? You don't do online banking? Drivers license, taxes, airline tickets, bills, you give away so much information for free, might as well get paid a bit.

If you spend your time worrying about stuff like that, that means you have something to worry about. Its pretty easy, don't cheat on your spouse, don't lie on applications or to your doctor. As for the junk food thing, they would have to oust the 80% of our nation that is obese. Mexicans will have taken over by then, so no worries.

As for the surveys, they never ask for your name or address or phone number and so on. All they ask is your birth year, sometimes date, but I give em the wrong date, right year, sex, and skin color. If they ever ask for more, which I can't remember any of them doing, then I don't participate. The scanner one does know my shopping habits, but buying various items does not mean I eat them? I can buy a gun tomorrow, doesn't mean I am going to shoot someone with it. That is 100% circumstantial, the fact that a lawyer gets away with **** like that is another problem in our country...a bit off topic.

By the way, I just pulled up your profile, now I have your email, your city, how many posts, when you were logged in....j/k, well, I can get those things, but you get the point. You cannot be secure in today's world. Its like social security numbers, the military uses it for EVERYTHING!!! Now they are heading to last 4 only, but we have schedules posted, now I know when I everyone has duty, when they are going to appointments and so on... there is no such thing as privacy. I also think of internet passwords, the longer they become, the better the program that hacks them becomes.

[Ascinder]

Looks like someone enjoys that tinfoil hat a little too much, lol

[vt_maverick]

So by your logic, I assume you don't use a credit card or check card. You pay full price for things at the grocery store vice using the store discount card. You don't have a cell phone, or cable/satellite tv or ISP? You don't do online banking? Drivers license, taxes, airline tickets, bills, you give away so much information for free, might as well get paid a bit.

+1 - Also keep in mind that you have to give your SSN to open a bank account, retirement plan, credit card, insurance policy, etc. You give pretty specific (and arguably obscure) examples, but honestly your information has already been gone for awhile.

If you spend your time worrying about stuff like that, that means you have something to worry about. Its pretty easy, don't cheat on your spouse, don't lie on applications or to your doctor.

That's a big +1. You're going to eventually get caught anyway, unless of course your spouse isn't really paying attention, which probably means she's cheating on you too.

I will say that I agree with Riff on the spam issue. I get pop-ups all the time asking me to sign up for surveys, and it's hard to know which ones are legit and which ones are malicious. It's not a lot of money for a decent amount of work and risk. Personally I think you'd be better off getting a part-time job (assuming you don't have to watch the kids of course) to make some real money.

[Stephen Biko]

So by your logic, I assume you don't use a credit card or check card. You pay full price for things at the grocery store vice using the store discount card. You don't have a cell phone, or cable/satellite tv or ISP? You don't do online banking? Drivers license, taxes, airline tickets, bills, you give away so much information for free, might as well get paid a bit.

Like I said - more power to you if that's what you want to do. However, your extremely defensive response suggests simple denial rather than an educated evaluation of the risk-reward trade-off.

And for the record - I don't use grocery loyalty cards, I only shop at stores that don't have loyalty card programs. Not only are they a prime example of a poor trade off between a significant amount of privacy for a handful of dollars, they are actually a false economy. See this article for an explanation: http://www.nocards.org/savings/regul...ce_study.shtml

If you spend your time worrying about stuff like that, that means you have something to worry about.

Of course I have something to worry about - increased privacy means increased safety and security. Your suggestion that "you have nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide" is naive at best. Privacy isn't about hiding bad things, its about not making it easy for people to hurt you. You might as well argue that the only reason to hang curtains in your windows or use sealed envelopes instead of postcards is to hide criminal activity, or that only bad drivers need to wear seatbelts. Only a fool would believe those things because after decades, even centuries, of experiences the risks have been made obvious to even the most incurious - information security is just in it's infancy so most people haven't really given it much thought. My point in responding to you is to say - hey maybe you should think about this a little bit more than you have been.

As for the surveys, they never ask for your name or address or phone number and so on.

If they pay you they have enough information to connect the dots and if you think they don't do everything they possibly can to connect those dots, you just haven't been paying attention. Here's a good place to start to understand the mentality of the people you are dealing with - at that bastion of tinfoil paranoia the wall street journal: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...512989404.html

By the way, I just pulled up your profile, now I have your email, your city, how many posts, when you were logged in....j/k, well, I can get those things,

No you can't. I practice what I preach. Try googling me if you don't believe me.

I will give away a couple of dots - I spend a lot of time thinking about information security because it's my job. I was one of the engineers that built the current IAFIS in Clarksburg and I regularly consult on information security to a few large organizations you've probably heard of, from the sound of it one of them may even employ you. I'm probably the only VX owner to ever work IAFIS so, in the right hands, that information is enough to identify me. I choose to reveal it because I believe the trade-off of dispelling the accusations of tinfoil-hattery to be worth the unlikely chance that anyone reading this is able to cross reference that group of engineers with the group of VX owners. More practicing what I preach about risk-reward trade-offs.

And, while I'm at it, here is a interesting essay on how just three pieces of information - gender, zip code and birth date is enough to uniquely identify almost 90% of the US population and how that can (and has) lead to unexpected disclosures of personal information: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/0...ry-and-privacy.

[Marlin]

No you can't. I practice what I preach. Try googling me if you don't believe me.

Actually, I did, and yes, your email and number of posts and last date visited is there. Unless you lied about your email address. All you have to do is click on "email member" and voila, it provides your email address. As I stated on surveys, they never get my actual birthdate, they usuall only ask for state or zipcode.
If someone wants to find out about you, they will. Kind of like airport security. If they really want to bring something on the plane, they will. If someone really wants to get on a military base, they will.

As to the security of SF86s, you are crazy if you think that is controlled. They all you on the phone to verify data, a non-secured phone. We recently had to remove all electronic devices from our school when they found out that many seemingly harmless devices, cd players, ipods, and so on, have the ability to record and transmit data. Kind of like buying a car with no foglights. The wiring is usually there, you just have to buy the switch and the lights. Same way with some of these alarm cock cd players. They are actually CD writers as well. Now we can only have analog radios with no other functions, ever try to find one of those?