Ask Lemmy

He blames me that mother forgot her phone’s and Google password because I recommended against it being a word.

That was kinda shit guidance. Shouldn't be relying on memory at all except for maybe a single password to a password manager. A password can we written down & stored securely.

Moreover, passwords are shit when they could be using passkeys. Passkeys are more secure, aren't memorized, & google accepts them. Decent password managers store them.

As for privacy & security: not your problem. They can leave their shit wide open to attack & deal with identity theft & fraud the hard, expensive way.

"We require privacy not to conceal our own wrong doing, but to protect against people who would abuse their authority to pry into our lives and do us harm by misrepresenting what they find."

Ask them to unlock their phone and give it to me. If they have nothing to hide from me, then they truly have nothing to hide from anyone since I probably dont hold power over them (nor do I care to).

If they say yes, I show them that im going through their photos, location history, browsing history, texts, emails, all the usual suspects for surveilance. If they're ok with all of that, then by God they truly have nothing to hide.

If they say no, I ask them why. Try to let them find the answer for themselves.

Most just refuse, which is a good reminder to them that everyone has some secrets to keep. Even if they're completely innocuous.

EVERYONE has stuff to hide.

It may not be illegal, but there are a lot of stuff I don't want to be public knowledge, as it would be highly embarrassing if they got out.

This is the same for everyone.

Then we need to discuss the illegal stuff, I am talking about stuff you wont even realize is illegal, or things that you did decades ago that is so minor that you never even thought about them.

In my generation, one classic part of growing up was torrenting just about anything you could find. I never considered it illegal at the time, but I sure as hell wouldn't want the popo start investigating me.

I see it like this, if you have nothing to hide, you can't be trusted.

As for your father's misplaced blame, he should be annoyed that neither of you wrote down the password, not that you used a word as a password.

Easiest way to explain privacy imo is simply just saying: "If you have nothing to hide, then why do you shut the door when you go to the bathroom?"

Years ago, I heard a lecture by the guy who investigated the case referred to in the article below. Thieves and con artists are a legitimate concern. Or at least they should be.

From the Batesville Daily Guard - Batesville, Arkansas

After fighting identity theft for seven years, country singer/songwriter David Lynn Jones is ready to take back his life.

During that time, Jones, on paper, was three people -- and at times, four.

"Two guys were playing me," Jones said. "It's unimaginable, until you go through it . . . that someone who doesn't even look like you can steal your identity. The damage," he said, "is incalculable."

Jones may be ready to sing "I Feel A Change Comin' On" again. That's the title of one of his singles from his heyday.

During better times, Jones released four acclaimed albums -- "Hard Times on Easy Street" (1987), "Wood, Wind and Stone" (1990), "Mixed Emotions" (1992) and "Play by Ear" (1994).

His charting singles include "Bonnie Jean (Little Sister)" which was also a popular music video on television, "High Ridin’ Heroes" (with Waylon Jennings), "The Rogue" and "Tonight in America."

He may be best-known for writing "Living in the Promiseland," a No. 1 hit for Willie Nelson.

While Jones kept writing songs during the past seven years, he could not release them because the identity theft culprits were getting his royalty checks by having the checks sent to their address. Much of the time, that address was in Colorado.

Now, Jones and his wife, Illa, who live east of Cave City, are looking forward to teaming up to record and release a new album.

He also has unreleased albums from the past that can now be put before the public.

"There's five (previously recorded David Lynn Jones) albums that never were released," Jones said. He plans to make those available to buyers on the Internet within the next few months.

Fans should be patient, though, because it may take quite awhile, he said.

In February, Baxter County sheriff’s investigators arrested Danny James Sullivan, who was working at a McDonald's in Mountain Home under the name David Lynn Jones.

Sullivan was also drawing disability checks from the government under his own name while working at the McDonald's under Jones' name. His aliases include Danny J. Bass and Danny J. Rader.

A day later, acting on a tip, the alleged mastermind of the plot, Janis Rae Wallace, was arrested at a home in Fayetteville. Wallace is also known as Janis French and Janis Rae Jones, the name she used while posing as the real Davis Lynn Jones' "wife."

She's even booked into the jail as Janis Rae Jones.

Wallace and Sullivan, both 51, remain in jail -- she, on a $500,000 bond and he, on a $200,000 bond.

They are each charged with nine counts of felony financial identity fraud, according to an affidavit filed with the charges and signed by sheriff's Sgt. Bob Buschbacher.

The information filed with the charges and in arrest reports matches the story told by Jones -- the real Jones.

"Those are all federal charges," Jones said.

The theft started, Jones said, when Wallace stole his driver's license while working for him.

"At the time, my Social Security number was the same as my driver's license number, and with just that information, they infiltrated my life," Jones said.

Soon, he was getting no mail. It was all going to the fake David Lynn Jones' address via an address change. The mail included preapproved credit card applications that the thieves filled out; after they maxed out the cards, they reported them stolen.

"Among the stolen items via mail were personal checks and business checks from music royalties the victim had earned as a songwriter and musician," Sgt. Buschbacher said.

"They had 'me' moved to Colorado; my phone was shut off," Jones said. "This was back in 2002 . . . . By the time we realized what was going on, we couldn't get it stopped. They wound up with my royalty checks from publishing music," including royalties from "Living in the Promiseland."

Buschbacher said that in the beginning, to further the identity theft scheme, Sullivan, posing as Jones, filled out an identity theft passport request victim information sheet and submitted it to the attorney general's office. Then, he obtained an Arkansas driver's license in the victim's name.

Meanwhile, Jones' elaborate and well-known recording studio at Bexar was stripped of all its expensive equipment.

"I still own the studio," Jones said Saturday. "It's for sale and has been for some time. These people had gone out there and took down the for sale sign and put up no trespassing signs. They were drawing money out of my checking account, which eventually caused me to be overdrafted," he said. His interest rates were doubled because of a bad credit rating.

And to add insult to injury, Wallace convinced people who dealt with Jones financially that someone was trying to steal her identity ("She was speaking as my 'wife,'" Jones said). So, those who could have helped would not even listen to the real Jones.

"When we started talking to credit card companies and banks, they didn’t believe it (was me)," Jones said.

The crowning portion of the identity theft scheme was yet to come.

"They started telling everybody I'd been in a horrible accident in Colorado and I was in a wheelchair and I couldn't play and sing anymore," Jones said. "She even wrote a letter and sent it to all of my family saying that."

Since he had been busy with his work during the earlier part of the problems and hadn't been in touch with family members regularly, several of them even believed the accident story, he said.

"My mother (Verna Jones) passed away during all of this and we were trying to make funeral arrangements," and a check his brother mailed to help with those expenses went to Colorado into the thieves' hands, Jones said. "Even my own brother didn't understand what was going on. I told him I never got the check . . . . It's so crazy when you're actually experiencing it."

The investigation revealed that Wallace and Sullivan obtained a Social Security card, a Colorado identification card and the Arkansas driver's license, all in the name of David Lynn Jones. Wallace then obtained power of attorney over Jones, claiming he was mentally disabled due to the fake "accident."

Wallace and Sullivan were even filing joint federal income tax returns as Mr. and Mrs. David Lynn Jones. Those returns were filed in 2006, 2007 and 2008.

Jones said as soon the investigation revealed the first name of the suspect, he knew who was behind the scheme even though she was giving her last name as Jones. Still, the identity thieves stayed one step ahead of authorities for a long time.

Before being arrested, Wallace and Sullivan were trying to get the title to some land Jones owns in Baxter County, authorities said.

A break in the case occurred 15 months ago when Wallace, as Mrs. Jones, and Sullivan, as Jones, applied in person for an identity theft passport at the Arkansas Attorney General's Office.

As soon as Wallace and Sullivan were arrested, investigators obtained search warrants for their houses. Jones said several items found in their homes could only have been obtained by their breaking into his home east of Cave City, where he and his wife have lived for five years.

"We've known for years things were being pilfered, things moved around. They were hanging out in the woods, watching for us to leave (so they could get into the house)."

Investigators found pictures and other items taken from inside Jones' house, as well as photos of the house taken from the driveway.

Jones said officers on the trail of the crooks had been advising Jones for months to be alert and stay well-armed, because one possible logical next step could be to eliminate Jones and his wife, so the identity thieves "could become us. That could have been the last (planned) step," particularly with them applying for the identity passport, Jones said. "Who knows what would have happened next?"

He has high praise for the attorney general's agent who felt something was wrong when Wallace and Sullivan approached him about getting that passport.

"That's what got them caught," Jones said.

The agent was suspicious enough to go into another room and look for pictures of Jones on the Internet. The pictures did not match the man claiming to be Jones.

"If it had not been for the attorney general's office, it'd still be going on," Jones said. "The attorney general's officer said it was the worst case he'd ever seen in all his years of investigating identity theft."

Baxter County Sheriff John Montgomery said the investigation involved personnel from the attorney general's office, the Social Security Administration's Inspector General's office and the sheriff's office.

Jones said he expects he still has years to go to clear the damage to his name.

When asked what the identity theft has cost him, Jones did not give a dollar figure. Instead, he said quietly, "It's cost me seven years of my life."

Aak if they're chill leaving the bathroom door open next time they use the restroom so you can watch. They have nothing to hide, right?

Cool, he has nothing to hide, but when people want to get at you, they will invent things. They will decide regular human behaviours are morally abhorrent, and they will have an infrastructure to enforce that. 

It's not about things that are wrong, it's about preventing abusable tools from existing.

Privacy is important so that nefarious individuals don't steal your identity, and everything you worked hard for, in your lifetime.

If they have nothing to hide ask for all of the following; all passwords, to everything (internet, bank, shopping accounts, investments, etc.) Bank statements Tax returns Get a set of keys for their homes, cars, businesses, etc. Remind them that you will be allowed to come over at any hour of the day or night and look through every nook & cranny of their property. If someone really is an open book, let the snooping begin. And also remind them that you will share whatever information you feel like with anyone you choose to, publicly.

Privacy prevents people from being abused, stalked and taken advantage of. Privacy is a form of personal security. That's why we lock the doors at night.

2 big things for me.

First is that everyone, and I mean absolutely everyone has something they want to hide. People assume "I'm not a violent person or a criminal" except yes you are, and you've done something. A great example is everyone in the US speeds, absolutely everyone. Does that mean you want every office to know every instance of you speeding if you get pulled over? So, yes everyone has something they'd rather not say.

Second is more of an example of you should be allowed to go places without everyone knowing. The example was about 5 years ago police used location data to find a person who broke into someone's home. Problem is that the location data they used returned one person who happened to be on that street around the same time. They were riding their bike down the street. To the police they had the person there, they had proof, it was good enough. Except it wasn't, and he obviously wasn't the person they were looking for. Location data put him there though, and sold him out. So maybe not the best thing for whoever to know exactly where you are at any given time.

As for encryption, ask him for his porn history. If he gets upset, just say "why it's not illegal"

I'm going to be real. I was part way through an explanation before I deleted it. What you are dealing with sounds like a situation where you simply won't win by using logic. To continue to labor under the presumption that a good and logical reasoning will have an effect is just going to stress you out and achieve nothing.

Google password because I recommended against it being a word.

IT nerds help me out here, but I've been under the impression that the best defense against brute force attacks is a very long password, and the idea of sprinkling in special characters or numbers is outdated. Something like "iwenttothestoreandboughtabirthdaycake" is a more secure password than "$6jds_*WghP6".

edit: Also the mantra to never write down any passwords is more of a workplace piece of advice. I personally think, and this would probably be helpful for older people, that writing down passwords in a notebook which is kept secure in their home is pretty safe. Short of a home invasion, that notebook is safe, and having it can encourage them to diversify their passwords on different accounts. So, if you are going to keep at the issue, taking an angle of using something they are more comfortable with like a paper notebook is going to be accepted more easily than trying to sell them on a password manager or something.

You don’t lock the doors of your house because you have something to hide, you lock it because you have valuable things you want to protect.

Your dad’s fear is not the government (whether or not it actually should be), but he should have a reasonable fear of criminals taking his money. Technology has made it easier than ever to be robbed but also created better locks than ever to fight the criminals.

Everyone's got something to hide.

For example, I like to keep my credit card number secret from criminals.

Tell him to leave the bathroom door open anytime he’s taking a shit in public then.

Ask him for his banking details.

In the end of the day, we have digital security for the same reason we have physical security, like a lock on your door. You can take a horse to water but you can't make them drink, so let him learn the hard way.

Ask him to share the passwords to all his bank accounts, when he refuses to just highlight that there are plenty of non-illegal things that you want to keep hidden.

Google sucks, but one thing I think they did right was giving you a way to print out a list of one-time passwords that can be used to recover an account if you forget your password.

Surveillance pricing is my go-to argument against that. Using the “leave-the-bathroom-door-open” or “give me your unlocked phone” is not a good counter because in their mind those are different things. So you need to use something that they aren’t aware of but will be offended by when they realize.

In Texas they are using personal data collected from ALPRs to accuse women of getting abortions. There were also concerns that personal data collected by period tracker apps would be used to accuse women of getting abortions. You could be doing something that suddenly becomes illegal and then those data could be used to harm you

ICE is using facial recognition and a database of questionable veracity to accuse legal residents of being illegal immigrants. They are collecting facial data of protestors and, apparently, using it compile of list of domestic "terrorists". You could be doing absolutely nothing illegal and the state could use your personal data to harm you.

Social media companies use data they collect about you to try to get you addicted to their products because you are easier to manipulate when you are addicted. They know a lot of their products have harmful impacts on people, but they don't care because they make more money that way.

If you have the right relationship for it, ask him about the porn he watches, his banking details and how much money he's got in his account, and tell him you'll go buy a billboard to put those on.

Those usually get people quite quickly, but they're also kind of "gotcha!" moments, and people will generally not respond well to them.

If you want a more structured argument, I think you'll need to reframe the issue. As I read your comment (I'm almost certainly missing huge amounts of context that could change this answer drastically) your father's argument is "privacy is bad because it is only used for bad things" and you're actually arguing back "privacy is good because I want to be left alone". But your dad thinks that you shouldn't be left alone, because being left alone means you're doing something bad.

So, don't argue why privacy is good, you need to argue why privacy isn't bad. Find some examples of things he likes that only happened because of privacy. Try to avoid things like revolutions, resistance movements or stuff like that, because it will only reaffirm his view that privacy means you're doing something bad/anti establishment.

This is where the aforementioned porn/finances comes in, since those are usually things people want to keep private, without having negatives attached (depends a bit with porn on morals). Any guilty pleasures that come into mind would also be useful for this.

Also, make the consequences of no privacy more personal. Government whatever, but what about Janet two doors down? What about his boss? What about his parents?

In the end I'd say it's all about the framing of why privacy matters in the first place. Establish a minimum need for privacy, then expand from there. Hope this helps you (or someone else)!

"Take off your pants, then."

I bet the Jews had nothing to hide in 1940 when Auschwitz was established. How do you imagine it worked out for them?

You know who has nothing to hide? North Koreans. If they had anything to hide their government would have already killed them.

The problem isn't always governments or police, but other bad actors. What if criminals get in? And they can be quite creative in how they can use personal information to extract money from their victims.

It's not necessarily about "the government", well it is, because governments often contain, or may come to contain, bad people, but they shouldn't be the only concern.

It's about not making it easy for bad people to interfere in your business, even if what you're doing is all legitimate and above board; and not making it easy for bad people to harm you or those close to you either.

Mobile telephone numbers aren't strictly a secret, especially those on monthly contracts. Names and numbers are linked in a provider's database somewhere. But for an untrusted third party to know that information? It's bad enough when someone who needs to know it sells it on to a telemarketing database. Imagine what would happen if any old crank got a hold of that.

Likewise we all have real names, home addresses (for the lucky majority anyway), etc. There are people who know these things. Perhaps even people we'd rather didn't, but it would be incredibly stupid to leave that information in plaintext for anyone else to find, especially if it can be linked to our online activity.

You might be the most fair and balanced Internet user in the world, but if your name and address is public, any crank who takes exception to you anyway will be at your door shouting and raving before you know it.

If we have to give it over, presumably to a trusted individual or organisation, we need a method where it can't be intercepted. So it's either a slip of paper at a clandestine meeting place or you need encryption to send it over the Internet.

There's plenty of other personal information that I haven't mentioned here where similar rules will apply.

a) Bullshit you haven't ever done anything illegal that you got away with
b) There is a whole galaxy of shit that isn't illegal that you don't want shared. How often do you jerk off dad? What was the last porn video you watched?

"May I see your browser history?"

Ask him why he doesn't have a t-shirt with his card details on it

"take off your clothes then"

and if they proceed to do that

"now let's go shopping"

Then they should be willing to submit to deep hypnosis, with the end result being them telling ALL of their darkest secrets, all on a live recorded broadcast.

"everyone does something illegal/has something they're ashamed of" I have that type of autism that doesn't let me do anything I know is bad; I pay my taxes and rent well before they're due, I don't drive over the speed limit, always push the shopping cart back to the corral.

The reason why privacy is important to me isn't because I'm bad, it's because being a good person makes you a target when the world is run by bad people. 

Never try to convince someone of anything mate, just let them do it the way they want at some point they will come back to you for help then you choose if you want to help or not.

Some people need to experience problems first hand.

If you have nothing to hide, you wouldn't mind if I borrow your credit card, right?

"If you have nothing to hide, why do you close your blinds to keep your neighbors from looking in? Why do you lock your doors if you have nothing to hide?"