On Demand
Open Phones: Is Email Privacy Overrated?
Do your feelings about email privacy correspond to your generation? People of "a certain age" might be appalled to learn their private emails aren't, well, all that private. But with young people exposing all their personal details on Facebook, is privacy an old-fashioned idea?
Do you consider email privacy important? Do you encrypt your personal emails or keep personal matters off of email? Comment below!
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Comments
It's not great that e-mails aren't private but sometimes that is the only way people communicate.
Don't forget about those folks who are afraid of the phone and only talk by e-mail. E-mail is the only form of communication and the only way to say what needs to be said.
What is missed by e-mail that you lose in face to face interactions are tone of voice, facial expressions. It is easy to be misinterpreted as silly when someone is serious, vs. someone sounds sarcastic but is playful.
I'm 25, and honestly, I don't care if the government taps my phone or reads my e-mail. I guess I've always thought that they have. Where my parents are from, they do wire-taps. Its ok with me, although I understand if it bugs other people.
Kids don't realize how they are losing their privacy on social networking sites. Faceboook, for example, usually makes it a condition of use of various features to forego your private informatiion. I am an attorney involved in this area of law and kids don't take the time to read the privacy terms of tese websites.
If younger people are less concerned about privacy, I think it's a function of age, not their generation. Young folks grow, Brian! When we/they age (I'm in-between, I think) their concern will grow.
Wait until we're/ they're having extra-marital affairs and money problems, and needing Viagra...
Here's a tip for you gmail users. Instead of going to http://mail.google.com, just go to https://mail.google.com. voila, you're encrypted.
same reason young people smoke more, drive dangerously, don't save money -- they haven't learned lessons yet. "youth is wasted on the young."
It should also be noted that using encryption schemes is behavior that will be flagged by any government wiretapping. People know and fear this.
privacy is NOT overrated. not sure if it's a generational thing- I am 35 and I value my privacy very much.
Is GMail's popularity (they sniff emails for advertising goals) not enough evidence that people do not mind living a public life.
I remember reading about a case at the turn of the 20th Century that involved right to privacy. A woman was photographed and her photo was used in advertising on a food product. The woman objected and did not give consent for her photo to be used in advertising. She sued and the case went to the Supreme Court (US). The Supreme Court ruled that people have a right to privacy and to go through this life not bothered and photographed without their permission.
This definately started the right to privacy thing, the case was from the late 1890s.
Now, anything goes.
It's unfortunate that some people think that living ethically is living publicly. If you trust your government or private companies so much, why are people trying to restrict them so much?
I'm 44. My dad was shocked when he overheard me tell someone my party affiliation. Several years ago when I had cancer I discovered my parents only told their friends I was ill. We are Italian and I think it is partially cultural as well.
The panopticon anyone? That is self-policing.
I think it's contradicting how teenagers don't want their parents to poke around their activities yet any stranger can find out by simply listening to their cell-phone conversations on the subway, or look at their Facebook/Myspace pages. It even seems that they are willing to let people to find out what they did.
I value privacy. I value the Bill of Rights.
But there is so much information out there, so many emails that I am such a small fish nobody cares about me. Or my stuff is just lost in the vast cyberspace.
Also, I understand that everything electronic is open to other eyes, whether they be the Yahoo server or the FISA-law-breaking feds. So I instictively understand there are some limits to what I would say via email, knowing prying eyes can get there.
This is the same for phone calls in this day and age.
just you wait you'll want your privacy back when the nazis come knocking at your door in the middle of the night.
I'd love to encrypt many of my emails. But what's this about it being hard to do on Outlook? What about the REALLY widely distributed Microsoft product (free), Outlook Express? There's a tab about it in the settings, but I don't understand the first thing about it. My impression is that my recipients won't either. The few times I've received an encrypted message from a provider, I got a really scary warning screen.
Younger people may care somewhat less about privacy issues, but Congress mostly "ain't" younger people. They should collectively understand our Constitution better than their behavior suggests regarding "anti-terrorism" eavesdropping laws. (And keep up the good work, Brian and all).
I just don't write things in an email that I wouldn't want just anyone to pick up on. I do shop online but I don't ever put my SS# or credit card #s or bank account #s in an email. I don't trust online banking. Those are my main concerns otherwise everything else the first sentence above applies.
This is insane - Bloomberg and the RNC were able to shut down protests at the 2004 RNC (and wrongly jail many protestors) in part based on email surveillance. How can you toss the 4th amendment in the trash so easily?
I think those 20 somethings might change their tune if it turned out they actually were spyed upon.
Privacy is just that. Governments who spy on the populace are, to use a Bushism, evil.
How does email ecryption work for the free email sites like gmail, hotmail, yahoo etc? Is there anything for that? Most people use web browsers for email, where the transmission is encrypted (as you just said https), but it is in plain text on the Google server, isn't it?
of course personal information is most useful -- to companies, creepy governments, who knows who else -- is a user's behavior over years and decades.
these people are CRAZY to be all right with the governement looking at your private correspondences. big brother has won the younger generation. once again the american idiots hand over their rights as "no big thing"
I love your show...
It's going to be much harder to stick up for our rights in the future, if we don't do it now. At 28, I do assume someone is watching somewhere.
The problem with neglecting your privacy online is that, whatever you feel comfortable with people knowing now, you have no way of knowing what information will become an issue in the future. The government or Google are collecting information about you that they will keep for the rest of your life. What if something that is acceptable now becomes a huge issue in the future? What if the government becomes even more totalitarian and certain views begin to be punished? This has happened in many countries. It's naive to not protect your privacy online!!!
I am not sure that it is a "generational thing." How can we assume that our parent's generation would be enraged by steaming open their letters? Empirical research repeatedly shows that about valuing civil liberties (the value of privacy included) have to be learned. I think that the "what do you have to be ashamed of" idea is pervasive, not generational.
Oh, and the first amendment as well.
verizon as an isp is allowed to collect personal info -- if it decided to sell that info/merge with a doubleclick -- then it really wouldn't matter how encrypted your data is.
Whose ethics? Apparently the society depicted in Orwell's 1984 is acceptable to some of the younger generation. I find it offensive when people have their private phone conversations in public.
Often times people are not concerned about privacy until theirs is violated with negative results. I personally have not had this happen to me but it has happened to a close friend and a family member of mine. It was really awful and although it was illegal and should not have happened it did and then the damage was done.
Yes! I do live like everything I write or say on the phone could be overheard. I don't break the law or do unethical things or share super-private stuff on email, and I don't mind people knowing about me.
BUT it's an entirely different thing when my GOVERNMENT wants the power to spy on me without warrants. Democracies need checks and balances and CIVIL LIBERTIES to keep from becoming dictatorships...
It starts with suspected criminals... And then what? Slippery slope. Here at work, even loyal employees have had statements misconstrued and they're accused of "treason" toward the boss...
Entering "https" does NOT assure you of email encryption. Internet mail is by its nature NOT encrypted! If the entire email session is "Https", it just may mean that the communication between your computer and the Google mail servers is encrypted, unless it is further encrypted, your emails are in clear text and, if intercepted (this is not hard to do), can be easily read.
By the way, the example on yesterday's show where a couple of hackers evesdropped on someone's email in a wi-fi area seems pretty irrelevant. Wi-fi/hotspot security is an issue, but it's not relevant to email encryption. Unless email is the only thing on your computer.
Really? Living your life ethically and/or morally means conforming to mainstream American standards? What about the rest of us? This assumes that we agree with all of the laws that might pertain to us. The decision ought not be made by those whose lives are uninteresting enough to be public 24/7.
Or just shred the Bill of Rights...
Long before email, my mother said, "Don't write it don't unless you want the world to read it."
In an age when anyone can be labeled an "enemy combatant," it's dangerous to have a lax attitude toward privacy. Not that there's anything sinister going now (well, is there?)--it's the "what-if" future scenario that's scary. If we don't fight it now, we're potentially handing a lot of power to a future government that may abuse it.
It's the death of modesty that we have embraced, not the death of privacy.
Fear of freedom or the fear to fight for it leads to the clamor for privacy. Let's not fear to exercise our freedoms and then privacy will be unnecessary.
I think you could live ethically and still have unpopular opinions, or phrase things that could be horribly misconstrued when taken out of context. Do we want to live our lives like politicians?
My brother got married last year. He & my now sister-in-law set up a website, but it required a password to access it.
I don't think it makes sense to say that if you live your life according to what you feel is a good standard, you don't need to fear the public snooping in on your email. I'm sure socialist minded intellectuals in the 50s thought they were living their lives according to good standards. They still got harrassed by a goverment/public that was less open-minded than it should have bee.
Information is valuable, and so far the public is basically giving it away to corporations (like Google) for free. Who owns this information is a fuzzy issue in society right now, and we have an opportunity to use this value for the betterment of society. Like taxes.
I'm just here visiting from the UK but I was shocked to hear so many people being flippant about their privacy! We are all innocent until there comes a time when we give people reasinable grounds to suspect we are guilty - but we shouldn't be monitored simply as par for the course. The Government certainly doesn't allow scrutiny of their files so glibbly and we, as citizens of whatever country in the world, should not accept such monitoring either. Viva la liberte!
I think that we are giving up on privacy security because it is becoming impossible to protect. What about people who take the mailing address off of a magazine before they leave it in a public place? Those days are gone.
It doesn't matter if you put your info on the internet or not - it is there regardless of your best privacy practices.
re [5] that may encrypt email at the point of sending, but the data that is stored on gmail servers is still unencrypted.
This may be off the main topic, but your recent caller who talked about "wedding web-sites", brought to mind my concern about "funeral web-sites". When my sibs and I recently took care of our mother's passing away, the funeral parlor where we held the service had a web-site listing the names of the deceased PLUS the date of death. Hmmm how can we make things easier for identity thieves??
I'm of the older generation, and YES, personal privacy is still of critical importance to me. If younger people don't care so much, we can chalk that up to being young and still relatively foolish. Witness the stuff that potential employers will find very revealing (often literally) on the Net someday. Too soon old, too late smart.
Kids' desire to show off that they're living the lives of their role models on TV is pushing them to post every picture and thought online. This narcissism is trumping their need for privacy
people are cattle!
on the other hand if our government HAS stopped hunting down communists or women taking birth control or gays does it matter?
as for advertisers nothing is free if you're using facebook you have to pay for that.
Many still use their employer-provided email address for personal or "shady" things, so they deserve the lack of privacy. Use a personal address at least if you care about privacy!
The question isn't really about personal info in email or on the web. Its' about private information being used against you by the government. The younger generations have never been blacklisted.
Exactly #20... it's not so much living an 'ethical' life... but how your personal info will be used against you by those who have something to gain.
Issue not totally without precedent. For many years phone lines were open to all on that particular exchange.
I am 26 and I am way to familiar to the sentiment that "this is just the way it is" and we need to adapt to this new media environment, this new relationship to large corporations and the government. It is called fascism and an earlier generation lost their lives to fight exactly this kind of system in WW2. It is a statement about the educational system in this country that young people (my generation) don't understand this.
Who decides what is "ethical"? How does one live completely "ethically"? I would hate for someone else to decide that for my life and then use it against me. I think it's terribly naive of anyone to say "they have nothing to hide". You may have nothing of which you are ashamed, but we should all value our privacy, & not "let it all hang out".
Chris (#): You are NOT sending encrypted emails between you and the recipient. You can only encrypting between your browser and the server. The email (the way you are describing) sent to the recipient is in clear text on the Internet.
People, like the woman caller with the wedding website, are incredibly naive and are opening themselves up to someone who has a day to spend to find out your ENTIRE background--like criminal records, past relationships (and sexual orientation), residencies, past employers, past lawsuits, and on and on and on.
The younger generation of course wants the scrutiny. Their sense of privacy is inverted. They keep blogs for the comments. They would love to be exposed by their perception of what the FBI might be, because it might just make them famous, it would be an event.
Sure, it's great to live ethically, but how do we know that what we consider ethical now will be considered ethical tomorrow?
The government has infringed on our rights enough already. Why give it another step so easily? It's notoriously hard to get back our rights once they've been given or taken away.
As someone who lives prepared to explain his behavior, I still realize insisting others live that way is oppressive. Some, if not most people, cannot live their lives tip-toeing through life.
Thanks for citing governments misuse of power to spy on citizens. Today's NYTimes: Phone companies get relief from lawsuits on government wiretapping. What's ethical about that?
What worries me is that people seem to forget that they have to participate in the democratic experiment for it to work. And a cornerstone of that is an individual's rights to privacy.
If it is true that people have stopped caring about a part of what made this country great, then the government snooping our emails is the far from the worst that can happen to America. Our very culture of freedom is at stake, and an apathetic populous is spearheading this movement.
I don't regard email as a secure means of communication, even when encrypted since it is stored on a server and can be forwarded.
I am very reserved about information that I submit to web sites. Personal information shouldn't be submitted except over encrypted SSL (https). I need to have a degree of trust that that info will not be used in a way that can be used for illicit activity. It's very risky for people to publish their diaries on the web. Not only does this put people at risk of identity theft, but harassment and burglery.
what sort of e-mails are people writing that could possibly be so coveted? This segment is the perfect epitome of American narcissism. Who cares about the cyber exchanges of any of your listeners? If anyone is stupid enough to reveal information of such colossal, life-altering importance, then they deserve to be caught. As far as identity theft, it happens: adapt and overcome. There are ways to protect yourself, but if it helps there's always the under-the-mattress idea.
I'd like to distinguish privacy from secrecy. What is private can be shared among family, friends, etc. What is secret should not be shared easily. Identity theft is a result of not recognizing the difference.
You should do a poll on what cell phone provider callers and guests use, many sound utterly awful.
I'm 19, work tech support at Rutgers University, and have been using computers all my life.
I've always grown up with the knowledge that much of the surfing you do is open to everyone's knowledge. You can disguise your tracks with proxying and other methods, but for most people, much of what they do is open knowledge to anyone that really wants to track what they do.
At the same time, though, the sheer size of the internet is a mitigating factor in privacy compromise - the average person's actions won't be tracked because there's no reason to track them.
I personally encrypt my emails, but I don't restrict sensitive topics to phone or anything like that - I enjoy having a permanent record of my communications with other people.
Just briefly touching on the 'living ethically' idea - obviously, living ethically is a good idea, but I don't believe that you should be driven to do so because you have no privacy.
One of the "BS" perps looked like he was in his twenties, this is a perfect example of the current generation's flippancy to technology use and how it'll come back to bite you. Sure go ahead and put your private info out in public, there are plenty looking to exploit it whether it is through a wedding site or facebook or myspace. Two words: identity theft.
Anyone who thinks it's prudent to e-mail whatever's on their mind, to a friend or business associate, is suffering from terminal stupidity. In most instances, I believe, it is most wise to keep communications to the point and most certainly devoid of comments weighted with ideas, notions, witticisms, whatever, which at some point in time, will ultimately bite the sender in the behind. Nowadays, as I've become aware of Facebook, and similar sites, I see how folks allow their lives to hang out there, for all to see, as laundry on a clothes line.
This thread is closed.
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