The Privacy Paradox

Note to you

Privacy is something that has always concerned people, but since the election and inauguration of Donald Trump, people are much more worried about this topic than ever. This is when Note To Self, a tech show hosted by Manoush Zomorodi and focusing more on the psychological aspects of technology, enters into the equation with Privacy Paradox.

The experiment, or to be more precise, challenge, was made according to a survey involving 2,000 Note To Self listeners, some of whom are still unaware of how extensive privacy issues can be, or had already been victims of targeted advertisement and identity theft cases. Participants were asked to subscribe to a newsletter which was sent to them for 5 consecutive days. Each day the newsletter contained a daily challenge revolved around five topics that concern every one of us: what our phone knows about us, how our own identity is sold back to us, how to hide ourselves from spying eyes, the psychology of being watched, and how to establish your own privacy policy. After listening to the short podcasts, participants were encouraged to answer a quiz in order to give an insight on their so-called “privacy personality”, which could be shrugger, realist, or believer.

Shruggers, realists, and believers

According to Zomorodi, realists are those who think about privacy, but more often than not expose them online conveniently instead of following any hardline privacy principle. Shruggersare the ones who care less, or absolutely nothing, about their online privacy and, as Zomorodi hopes, will reconsider their online life and turn into realists after listening to the podcast. Last but not least, a believer is someone who actually chooses a privacy position on top of all the others.

What does the test say?

Tens of thousands of people have taken the challenge, only 43% of which knew how to get more privacy in their life before the challenge. However, that number increased up to 80%after the podcasts. 90% learned about privacy invasion types they had never heard about before and 70% wants to push for further protection of digital rights.

But by far the biggest achievement is the increase of believers by the end of the challenge: beforehand, only 20% of the listeners were true believers. By the end, that number went up to 50%, showing that when it comes to privacy, people indeed care about their online life and will do anything to keep it protected.