How Privacy Really Affects YOU (PT I)
Real-life case examples of privacy nightmares that could happen to you
Today, privacy has been discussed more than ever before. Some think it's essential to safeguard our online information, while others brush it off as something not worth worrying about. But here, we're skipping the arguments and getting right into the good stuff – real-life stories that show you why internet privacy is a big deal, and how it could personally affect you. So, grab a cup of tea and join us in this post to explore why keeping your online life private is more important than you might think...
1) You Might Lose All of your Data and get Investigated
Source: A Dad Took Photos of His Naked Toddler for the Doctor. Google Flagged Him as a Criminal
Mark, a dad who stays at home in San Francisco, noticed something unusual with his toddler. His son's private area appeared swollen and caused him pain. Mark grabbed his Android phone and snapped some pictures to document the issue so he could monitor its progress.
This happened on a Friday night in February 2021. His wife contacted a nurse at their healthcare provider for an urgent video consultation the next day, given the ongoing pandemic. The nurse asked for photos to help the doctor prepare.
Mark's wife took her husband's phone and sent close-up pictures of their son's groin area to the doctor, not giving much thought to the tech giants that facilitated this easy sharing of digital data.
Thanks to these photos, the doctor diagnosed the problem and prescribed antibiotics, which cleared it up quickly. However, this incident led to a much bigger problem for Mark, costing him over a decade's worth of contacts, emails, and photos, and even putting him under police investigation.
Tech companies have come under pressure to act as guardians, scanning the content passing through their servers to identify and prevent criminal activities. However, this practice can involve delving into private archives, like digital photo collections, which users may not anticipate, leading to innocent actions being viewed suspiciously.
Mark had been heavily reliant on Google services since he set up a Gmail account in the mid-2000s. He used Google Calendar to sync appointments with his wife, backed up photos and videos to Google's cloud using his Android smartphone camera, and had a phone plan with Google Fi.
Two days after taking the photos of his son, Mark received a notification that his account had been disabled due to "harmful content" that violated Google's policies and might be illegal. He suspected that Google misunderstood the photos related to his son's infection as child pornography.
Mark, who had worked as a software engineer on an automated tool for a tech company to handle flagged video content, believed his case would be resolved once a human reviewer examined it. He submitted a request for a review, explaining his son's infection.
However, a few days after Mark filed an appeal, Google informed him that his account would not be reinstated, providing no further explanation.
At the same time, he discovered the repercussions of Google's decision. He lost access to emails, contact information, and documentation of his son's early years, and his Google Fi account was shut down, necessitating a new phone number from another carrier. Without his old phone number and email address, he couldn't receive security codes to access other online accounts, effectively locking him out of his digital life.
Mark didn't know that Google's review team had also flagged a video he had made, leading to an investigation by the San Francisco Police Department.
In December 2021, Mark received a letter from the San Francisco Police Department, informing him that he had been investigated and providing copies of search warrants issued to Google and his internet service provider. The investigation related to "child exploitation videos" and occurred within a week of Mark taking the photos of his son.
Mark called the investigator, Nicholas Hillard, who informed him that the case was closed. Mr. Hillard had attempted to contact Mark but couldn't reach him because his phone number and email address no longer worked.
Mark asked Mr. Hillard to inform Google of his innocence so he could regain access to his account, but Mr. Hillard indicated that Mark needed to contact Google directly.
Mark appealed to Google again, providing the police report, but received no response. After being notified that his account was being permanently deleted, Mark contemplated suing Google but decided it wasn't worth the cost.
2) You could be Paying More for Health Insurance
Source: Health Insurers Are Vacuuming Up Details About You — And It Could Raise Your Rates
Without attracting much attention from the public, insurance companies and data brokers are making predictions about your future healthcare expenses based on various personal details, such as your ethnicity, marital status, television viewing habits, bill payment history, and even your clothing purchases.
Several companies were promoting the use of "lifestyle" data and using jargon like "social determinants of health." However, the implications of their offerings are concerning: where your daily activities, including what you buy, eat, and watch on TV, could influence how much you pay for health insurance.
With minimal oversight, the health insurance industry has teamed up with data brokers to gather a ton of information about millions of Americans, potentially including you as a reader. This data includes details like your race, education, TV preferences, marital status, and financial status, as well as your social media activity, bill payment habits, and online purchases etc.. All this information is fed into complex computer algorithms that generate predictions about your potential healthcare costs.
The industry has a history of boosting profits by signing up healthy people and finding ways to avoid sick people — called “cherry-picking” and “lemon-dropping.” Among the classic examples: A company was accused of putting its enrollment office on the third floor of a building without an elevator, so only healthy patients could make the trek to sign up. Another tried to appeal to seniors by holding square dances.
For instance, if you're a woman who recently changed her name, the algorithms might predict an impending expensive pregnancy or increased stress due to a recent divorce, potentially raising your medical expenses. If you've purchased plus-size clothing, you could be labeled at risk for depression, which can lead to higher mental health care costs. Additionally, if you're low-income and a minority, the data suggests you might live in a less safe neighborhood, increasing your health risks. People who downsize their homes tend to have higher health care costs. As do those whose parents didn’t finish high school.
In this landscape, insurance companies are eager to merge data from data brokers with clinical and payment records to gain insights into patient behavior. This is particularly relevant as the healthcare industry shifts toward value-based payments, where providers are compensated based on patient outcomes rather than the quantity of care provided.
“I filled out a request on the LexisNexis1 website for the company to send me some of the personal information it has on me” says Marshall Allen from ProPulica. “A week later a somewhat creepy, 182-page walk down memory lane arrived in the mail.”
“LexisNexis had captured details about my life going back 25 years, many that I’d forgotten.” “It had my phone numbers going back decades and my home addresses going back to my childhood in Golden, Colorado. Each location had a field to show whether the address was “high risk.” Mine were all blank. The company also collects records of any liens and criminal activity, which, thankfully, I didn’t have.”
“My report was boring, which isn’t a surprise. I’ve lived a middle-class life and grown up in good neighborhoods. But it made me wonder: What if I had lived in “high risk” neighborhoods? Could that ever be used by insurers to jack up my rates — or to avoid me altogether?”
3) You Might be Paying More for the Same Product
Source: Mac users might be paying more than PC users for airline tickets and more
Some retailers are reportedly charging Mac users higher prices than PC users for the same products or services, including airline tickets.
This occurs by identifying users with expensive Apple computers and then quoting higher prices based on that information. The assumption is that Mac users may be targeted because they are perceived as having the financial means to afford more expensive computers.
You might have noticed this before: booking the same flight from different places can give you different prices, but now your computer model matters too.
4) You Might be Secretly Spied on
Sources: Amazon’s Ring doorbell was used to spy on customers, FTC says in privacy case
An ex-employee of Amazon's Ring doorbell camera division engaged in months-long spying on female customers in 2017 by accessing private footage in bedrooms and bathrooms, according to the Federal Trade Commission. The FTC announced a $5.8 million settlement with Amazon over privacy violations related to this incident.
The FTC revealed that Ring employees viewed videos made by at least 81 female customers using Ring products in 2017. The employee responsible for the spying went undetected by Ring for several months until a colleague noticed the misconduct, resulting in the employee's termination.
The FTC also noted that Ring provided employees with unrestricted access to customers' sensitive video data, allowing them to view, download, and transfer this data for personal use.
5) You Might be Secretly Spied on.. in your Car
Source: Tesla workers shared sensitive images recorded by customer cars
Tesla employees shared sensitive videos and images recorded by customer cars through an internal messaging system between 2019 and 2022. According to interviews with nine former employees, these recordings, captured by cameras built into Tesla vehicles for driving assistance features, included highly invasive content. Some of the shared content featured Tesla customers in embarrassing and private situations, while others contained footage of accidents and road rage incidents.
The report suggests that the shared videos and images were circulated within Tesla offices, and some employees expressed concerns about privacy breaches. Tesla's online "Customer Privacy Notice" states that camera recordings remain anonymous and are not linked to individuals or their vehicles. However, some former employees claimed that the computer program they used at work could show the location of the recordings, revealing where a Tesla owner lived.
Summary & Outro
In summary, we’ve looked at how privacy can actually affect you on an individual level.
For instance, some retailers may charge higher prices to Mac users based on their perceived financial capacity. To protect yourself, consider using privacy-friendly browsers, blocking cookies while browsing and using ad blockers on your devices.
Additionally, sharing (and taking) personal photos for legitimate reasons, like seeking medical advice, can lead to unintended consequences, as was the case with Mark, who lost access to his digital life and even faced a police investigation. To safeguard your data, be cautious about sharing and capturing sensitive content and consider using secure, end-to-end encrypted platforms for your communications, as well as not backing everything up to the cloud by default.
Your data privacy can also affect your finances, as health insurers and data brokers collect personal information to predict your healthcare expenses, potentially leading to higher insurance rates. To mitigate this, be mindful of the information you share online and consider opting for insurance providers that prioritize data protection and transparency (if any), while giving out the absolute minimum amount of data required.
Furthermore, privacy breaches aren't limited to your home. Even your car can be a source of privacy concerns, as employees at Tesla were found to have shared sensitive videos and images recorded by customer cars. To protect yourself, you should buy cars that only do the one thing cars are intended to do: drive you around. If it’s too late for that, practice digital minimalism: your smart car doesn’t need access to your Instagram account. Review your car's data-sharing settings, opt-out of telemetry, and stay informed about your car manufacturer's privacy policies and updates related to data collection and sharing.
It’s also important to understand that these examples represent just a fraction of the potential privacy breaches we face today. Privacy is essential for safeguarding not only our personal information but also our physical safety and peace of mind..
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