Comment by ohhnoodont | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ohhnoodont | Hacker News Reader

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I think we may just be bumping into cultural differences here. I grew up in a household were being naked around family members was common. I spend time in clothing-optional spaces. I rarely draw the blinds on my windows, etc. I'm not concerned with what other people think in this way and such images could never be used to extort me. Consider the case of Germany - people there are extremely concerned about their privacy and data protection. At the same time public nudity is an entrenched cultural norm.

It's also known that people are not very good at assessing risk. People are more word about dying at the hands of a serial killer than they are of dying in a car crash or slipping in the shower. I feel you're underplaying the psychological harm of having all of your data crawled through by a creep (that would include all of your photos, sites visited, messages sent, everything).

All I can really say is that if someone gained access to my machine, the camera would be the least of my concerns. That's true in nearly every context (psychological, financial, physical, etc).

Empirically, most low level extortion does seem to be about leaking video. I would see a threat model based on 'criminal wants to extort me for money'. As more reasonable than 'creep wants to look through my computer for creeping'. And it seems like extortion focusses on video, so that is the bigger threat. Even if it is less invasive.

I presume the reason behind this is that video is much more likely to be re-shared. Sending bob a zip of someone's inbox is unlikely to be opened, and even less likely to be shared with strangers. But send bob a video of Alice, and he might open it. Heck, he might not know what the video is until he opens it. So even if he is decent, he might still see it. And if he is less decent and shares it, strangers are much more likely to actually view it.

I think extortion in the form of "I've encrypted your data, pay to get it back" is much more common. Ransomware. It's scalable, automatable. Extortion of video is harder to automate.

I think, though am prepared to be wrong, that you'll probably find yourself in the minority there.

It's not just about nudity and extortion, but someone having access to watch you, whenever they feel like, in your safe space. That sense of violation that people also feel when (for instance) they have been the victim of burglary - the missing stuff is often secondary to the ruined sense of security. There's a vast difference between leaving your curtains open and having someone spying on you from inside your own home.

Is it rational to put this above other concerns? That's a whole different debate and not one I'm particularly interested in. But it explains why people are concerned about cameras over 'mere' data intrusion.

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