Meh. All your scenarios are taken from what is assumed to already be a private aspect of our lives, the intimate sphere.
That's a nigligible percentage of data cases and one which already comes built-in assumed privacy. And, indeed, a blackmailable situation.
Now can you please ask your student how they would feel when realizing that while showing off their fitness prowess on Strava and Endomundo, they are (potentially) providing insurers with data which will affect their health care insurance, life insurance, their mortgage, and potentially also their car insurance. And, of course, also the interest rate on their car loan because their BMI and pulse were higher than healthy average for that age.
No blackmail, no inherent hankering for privacy since willingly shared data (without reading or caring whether the platforms shares the data with third party providers), all innocent data. Just pulse, speed, and a whole bunch of health data the user even didn't realize was also uploaded and thus shared with third party providers.
Still nothing to care about being protected? Maybe think about those Amazon employees who have taken life insurance as offered by their Overlord, Amazon Inc.
What if Google decides tomorrow to become a health care insurance agent? Sitting on that location and Google Fit, and Google Wellbeing, data? Heck, they may even be able to mine how often you order food via Uber Food and from which fast food joint.
Your data is worth and deserves to be protected. You may not realize it should but it definitely shouldn't be accessible to anyone not first degree relationship or approved health provider.
And that Finish company who got hacked should be taken to cleaners for lacking to properly encrypt that data. Data hacks are Always possible, but encryption is cheap and easy enough to secure most of the data which can be vulnerable. That's a basic standard which they should have implemented and which would have prevented this from happening (unless they were hacked via an authorized machine).
Addendum: it also needs be said a lot of data harvested is harvested stealthily. And here I'm not just talking of cookies which track your internet history or Javascript which triangulates you despite having location access disabled. I'm talking about device fingerprinting which allows them to connect you with your account cross-device without being logged in. I'm talking about "beacons" dropped on sites you visit to monitor your activity. All that just because you signed up for a service and decided to use them.
Yes, but how much of it is "guessable" through other data points? Can Google know when a marriage is struggling or, a person is cheating on their partner? I would say it isn't too difficult - how do their algorithms handle it?
The "opt-in" of wearables is obviously another concern. I would say that they are already monitoring and monetizing the data in ways we wouldn't be comfortable with - but none of our "intuition and wring" is set up to handle any of this, especially since we can't actually see what "this" is.
I totally agree with the argument that there's no value to that data without the hankering for privacy around it. But it's an anomaly in the vast sprawl of data harvesting and mining and profiling which is done. A lot of which without disclosure.
Facebook can because they do emotions analysis. But there’s a ruling against them selling against that data.
All three could, but it would require many dots to be connected. Yet, all three have listening devices (Facebook are actually the ones who applied for the patent on turning on phone mics and cameras remotely - the NSA may disagree). Yet, I would say Amazon is closest to tie those dots together (see later in this comment).
Edit: Cheating is probably not too difficult to recognize, especially not if people are heavy FB/IG users. Unless they have solid discipline, there's probably easy to recognize patterns.
I'm old fashioned and I would subscribe to the theory I don't mind sharing that data with the provider I've chosen, if only I knew that's all to it.
I went with the wearables/health example because the loans and insurances issues are the easiest to explains and they tend to hit home without needing to write a whole dissertation.
But that pesky JavaScript which triangulaties despite no allowed location access is very valuable too. Location can be used for disposable income estimation. Btw when did you allow pretty much any website which wishes so to read out your browser history? Pretty sure you never did so, at least not explicitly. It's just a cookie though and it's very widespread in use.
Do people who have Ring smart doorbells and security cameras know that they operate facial recognition, and share data with more than 400 law enforcement agencies in the USA? That’s only disclosed in legalese without disclosing more than “may share data with relevant third party providers” (or something like that).
Do people know that Amazon has applied for a patent which allows them to make recommendations based on what the (future) drone delivery camera records?
"When we delivered those condoms for your weekly Thursday visit to your mistress [she has Ring devices, busted], we noticed that your solar panels are first Gen and could do with some upgrading which will improve their efficiency. Here's a list of recommended suppliers" [Added to your profile: operates solar panels, higher disposable income than previously estimated, can make recommendations on average 10-12% more expensive]
But, once they have the baseline, they can likely find other data points that quite accurately map, that aren't covered in the ruling.
Amazon are great at screwing us while helping us - it is all so convenient, what could go wrong??
The problem is that even the tech savvy and security conscious can't keep track and at every point, there is a hundred new points created.
Yup, and that's why it is so important that we keep raising awareness. So people will support regulatory efforts like the GDPR and California's new online privacy law. Rather than approve one of Trump's first acts which was to give ISPs more access to commercial use of customer data.
Having too many regulations sucks but well-crafted ones can almost nullify the potential harm.
"Use that data internally as much as you want, but you can't share it. And you can only use your own platform data"
It doesn't matter how many new data points are created then. Shareholders aren't going to keep agreeing with multiple $5bn (and higher) fines every year. That will eventually lead to changes in the board room and on executive level.
Of course, then the battlefield becomes what consists of own platform data. Amazon owns RING so that's platform data. Facebook WiFi requires location access to be set to always ON, so that's own platform data even if it's the pages/businesses who use FB who provide the WiFi.
The more people understand the potential of data harvesting and profiling, the closer we come to potential solid regulations. Only those can eventually protect us and your data is worth that protection. It truly is.