What's so creepy

Submitted by skeptic on Sun, 2014-01-12 23:02
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I wish I had a deep psychological understanding of people's fear of internet openness. It is so often seen as creepy and privacy-violating. I see this reaction as paranoia and superstition. I don't get it. We're gonna have to come to terms with it. Normally I'm the Luddite but I'm not part of the openness backlash.

Recently a G+ post described these Google options as "creepy".

Its all about perspective. None of those strike me as even slightly "creepy".
I don't stop all strangers from coming to my front door to talk to me, and we regard as weird those people who do. Most often it is to my benefit (excepting a few Jehovahs, Mormons, and other sales people). If someone wants to send me an email, I welcome social interaction. If they are a spammer I'll flag them as such - the Gmail spam filter is pretty good. I get spam less than once a week and I have a very open profile.

I welcome Google understanding my tastes and tailoring advertising accordingly. Perhaps one day the world will understand I'm not interested in weightloss tips or a bigger penis. If you are looking at stuff you dont want the world to know about, turning off your history is not enough. The NSA has shown that.

The only one I have changed (ages ago) was the Youtube contact option, which is a remarkable piece of stupidity that dates from long before the Google acquisition.

Happily some of the comments on that original post agree with me. (Others might want to consider a therapist). You can live your life cowering behind locked doors and closed curtains, or you can actually live.



I've blogged before about how privacy is gone, get over it.

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