I think I'm just going to start writing, using the first question as a starting point and trying to answer the others in the process. So...
Am I comfortable sharing my online data? Depends on the context. I don't feel comfortable if people who know me personally can easily have access to that data, because I want to have as much control as I can over who knows what about me, and there are many people who don't have a minimum of respect for that and just go around telling others about my life, sometimes in a pretty intrusive way. To mitigate that, I stopped sharing any piece of information on social networks long ago, so no one knows now what I do, where I go or how many stupid things I think or say throughout the day (spoiler: a lot). Or at least no one knows that from me, because I don't share it online.
That, of course, applies only to people who can actually do something that I consider disrespectful to my privacy. In these forums, for example, I've already shared bits of personal information about me, but no one from real life knows that I'm here or that this place even exists, and no one here is going to do anything with the information I share. I'm just irrelevant in this place. So, in the end, my personal information won't reach many people here, and those who get to read it will forget about it the second they read the next post. And, even if someone would remember anything that I said about me, who'd care? They'd just not use it in any way, much less in a way that could be intrusive to my privacy.
To sum up, information is power, and more data means more power. If I share some personal information with people who both know me and my family or friends, and I also share that same information with some random users here, the difference between the first situation and the latter is that people who know me personally have the chance to do something with the power I'm giving to them, whilst the random users don't. That is to say, the same amount of power can have a certain effect when is hold by some people, but it's completely useless in the hands of others.
Now, in the case of big corporations or countries, that power that I'm giving to them has indeed an effect: they not only can do something with that information, but they keep it doing it all the time. However, what they do with my data is not something that interfere with my life; they just use it for marketing purposes and the like. So am I comfortable with sharing my data with those entities? Not really, but it's not a concern either. I just prefer not to do it, but only if the gains for not sharing my data are bigger than the effort required.
For instance, if a cookie notification message gives me the option to reject them or just allow the necessary cookies, I'll click on that, because I don't care about anything else apart from the necessary stuff. Ads don't do anything for me, I just ignore them all the time, so I couldn't care less if they are targeted or not. And the same goes for the analytics and the traffic of the sites I visit, especially those which I don't visit often: it's good for the developers to have that data when available, but that doesn't benefit me in a way that I'm interested, so I just don't care. However, if not allowing a site to use my data means making any effort beyond a click or two, then I'm not going to go mad: just take it and have a good time with it.
When it comes to my mobile phone and the permissions I give to certain apps, however, I am quite more careful. And the reason is in essence the same than what I already stated before: the gains for taking my time to disallow certain permissions to certain apps or to Google itself are bigger than the effort, because I'm not interested at all in knowing all the places I go or what routes I follow to go there, and I'm definitely not interested in Google knowing this. Thus, since permanently disallowing those permissions only take me a minute or two, it's worth it for me. But I don't do it for fear to Google or whatever. Just let me tell you an illustrative anecdote.
A few years ago, an exgirlfriend of mine told me that, when I was still living in the same city than her, she tracked me down using the information that I was giving to Google and other apps in my phone. Thus, she could always know where I was living and all the places where I used to go. In fact, during that time she was "casually" tutoring a child that lived in the exact same area than me, just a few meters from my flat. The story just gets even creepierfunnier when adding the fact that my exgirlfriend had to actually cross the whole city (a very big one) from one end to another just to tutor that one child that happened to live a few meters from me.
So... yeah, I'm selective with the data I share on the internet, and I have reasons why. Basically, people have used that information in the past to try to interfere with my life in one way or the other, or just for gossiping, which is equally bad to me. And, since I just don't like that crap at all, I try to keep a low profile whenever I believe that people who have access to my data can have the power to use it in an intrusive manner. Otherwise, I prefer not to share too much information either, because Big Data is not particularly enriching my life (I barely get something from it that I personally find useful), but it's also not a concern. So, depending on the circumstances and the nature of the data, I may not care at all.
That said, I'd like to add that, even if it's not even worth thinking about it, because it's impossible to prevent, big corporations or countries having too much data is never a good thing. Big Data is used to identify patterns of use and consumption of products, services and other goods, among other purposes, and, even if that may seem good in the surface, because we have our targeted ads and videos and whatnot, that also means that big entities have enough information to predict what we're gonna like and use it to (at least) (subtlety) control our consumer habits, while we happily accept it and look the other way. So, if I could stop sending all my online data to any big company or country just by clicking a button, I'd certainly do it, because sharing it doesn't provide me with anything valuable enough, but keeping my data to myself would make others cease to have any form of control or power over me.
But, as I've said, it's not even worth thinking too much about it. (Except for discussing purposes, like in this post. Then it is interesting to think about it.)
TL;DR: targeted ads murdered my dog using a straw.
Last edited by Verter - on 10 December 2020I'm mostly a lurker now.
