Privacy as a premium: Why it’s time to say goodbye to the free internet

Privacy as a premium: Why it’s time to say goodbye to the free internet.

What? Since when has the Internet been free?

-- Tom

 

It's free when you're in school

 

I guess you never used it in the 90s.

 

Hi elapsed,

Au contraire, in the early 90s, I worked on a breaking technology research team investigating browser frontends/server backends, and even published a paper at one of the WWW Conferences. Before that, at another company, I had worked on an advanced language research team and used the ARPAnet to login to an IMP server at BB&N in Cambridge, MA to link to the UCSD research project housing a working interpreter for the Ada language (Red) to test generics in the language. Eventually, the Green language proposal won over the Red which was gaining momentum at the time because of the working interpreter, but the Green language (Honeywell-Bull) won the design competition for Ada due to the existence of its Rationale.

-- Tom

 

I thought it was pretty well spelled out in the article. They're talking about an Internet experience filled with services that are provided to the user free of charge.

"However, there is an old adage that applies here: if you don’t pay for the product — it means you are the product."

Did you even read the article? The whole point was that up to this point people have been happily trading personal information in exchange for "free" services, but now it's getting to a point at which there is pushback from that, and people are beginning to be willing pay actual money to maintain privacy.

"So now that we’re ready to pay for privacy, we have to understand our prior expectations of privacy and how we can change them..."

 

Hi blainfry,

My original comment was meant to be 'ironic' - get it?

-- Tom

 

I do know what irony is, but no I don't get how you were being ironic. I guess that's ironic.

 

I understood Tom's phrasing and the article. Right now, so many services are "free" but, in the case of big companies offering "free" products, it comes with a big price.

By the way, who thinks the Internet was free in the nineties? For most consumers, it was ridiculously expensive. Most consumers (at home - for the masses) had one of very few gateways - CompuServe, AOL, Prodigy, and the like, which you paid X amount of money a month for. Then, when these services began giving access to the Internet (in late 1994 and early 1995) you would only get X amount of time for ridiculous amounts of money.

 

"Free as in beer" is part of "free as in freedom" IMO. If a country claims to have freedom of speech, but it's technically only there for people who can monetarily afford it, that's not really free speech is it?

 

blainfry you remind me of someone.

 

RandFry, BlaineCal, with a dose of Reality. Humorous, to say the least. It's appropriate someone named Gullible posted in this thread.

Anyway...

I'm conflicted about "paying for privacy." The article mentions my specific concern:

Yet, who is to say that the company you are paying for privacy isn’t turning around and selling demographical information to the highest bidder? Paranoid, sure. Possible, yes.
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I would only change one thing. Who is to say the company you are paying for privacy isn't (fill-in-the-blank-with-hundreds-of-scenarios)? It's a lot more than just concern they might sell my email, etc.

Things have become so crazy, I have to wonder about every company claiming to have my "privacy" in mind. As much as I love the offerings of Abine, for example, I wish I knew more about them. Trust is very hard to gain knowing what we know these days. It's a whole new ballgame on many fronts.

Bottom line: It's hard to trust.

It's worth repeating (with one addition): It's hard, maybe impossible, to trust anyone to handle any area of my privacy for $$$. Sad but true.

 

Free as it applies to internet connectivity is a bit of a loaded phrase. When something is free you have to ask who the customer actually is. The class example is Gmail and Yahoo mail. Yes, the accounts are free. It is clear the customer are the advertisers. In the case of email if the customers are the advertisers then how can you expect any privacy when you are not paying the bill? Lockbox it might be difficult to imagine your data being secure even with a for pay system, however it is much more likely that you will be able to find a private system when you pay money. Generally speaking I want to be the customer when it comes to anything internet.In the end it is really only the customer who will have any illusion of control or power over a business contract.

 

I agree 100%. I was on a different track when I wrote the above (discussing those old internet access fees). I obviously believe "free" is relative when YOU are the product. On the other hand, if you read my last post (right before yours) there are concerns with "paying for privacy" as well.

 

Indeed

Zero-knowledge systems are very cool, but hard to implement in useful ways. The best approach that I know is spreading trust in ways that reduce risks of compromise through collusion.

 

If they force me by putting up the charges to ride the 'Super-Highway", and that can only be altered by ISP's, then I will be forced to become a second or third class netizen!

Free for me! ...relatively speaking.

 

If the Internet is getting less free , as in freedom, many will go "underground". There are always ways to transfer data , store data and encrypt it, with something better than SSL, or AES . Even if you have nothing to hide, you don't have to like the fact that big brother is watching you..
That is why 2014 is the year of encryption (google on that) and things like encrypting data before storing it in the cloud with modern encryption (not 2001) and email encryption services like : countermail , startmail , protonmail , inka mail etc. , especially when they are not USA based will atract more users. I welcome this new free Internet although i am a white hat