gimme your phone and your password i wanna look around.

“Take your pants off then jackass.”

It’s a stupid comment, treat it with the contempt it deserves. Do they shut the door when they take a shit? whyyyyyy???. You close your blinds there at night? Why ya lockin’ the phone there buddy.

How much trust do you have in your executive and justice system? Data is great for associating people and making up reasons for just cause when there was none and even when there is none.

Targeted advertising must pay tracking and advertisments. It must be more expensive by default. Worse than that, it can make it more expensive for you specifically, and timed when in need. Instead of product based and on a competitive neutral market, the one paying most who consequently must also pull the most money from you wins, and you lose the most.

Investing inconvenience into authentication security means someone can’t just grab your phone and clear out your bank accounts and all accounts linked to your email address. Does every app need 2FA? Maybe not, you can consider a convenience vs security risk assessment. But if you don’t have the technical and security expertise to do so you risk gross misinterpretation.

Even if you lock stuff, if your communication is not encrypted, people can learn if you’re a worthwhile or vulnerable target. Even if you’re careful, phishing can be designed specifically for you and your weaknesses, and with knowledge about your persona, behavior, and views.

Even if it doesn’t affect you, it can enable and ease attacks on those close to you, those you are in contact with.

Any systematic weakness is not only a weakness in that aspect but an entry point into the whole system. Be it personal connections, contracts, services, your bank, your insurance, whatever.

Simplify it for him.

How would he like if somebody would look trough his mail all the time?

How would he like if somebody would just come to his house and start to look around?

How would he like if all his conversations with his friends were taped?

Amd most importantly, how would he feel if all that information that previously was collected had no guarantee to only be accessible by the people he is giving the permission, but there is very real change somebody malevolent can access that information too.

Ask if he closes the door when he’s on the toilet. Everyone knows what is going on in there and it’s nothing illegal, but it’s still something most people rather do behind a closed door, because… privacy matters.

They may have nothing to hide but probably something to protect like their credit card numbers, social security numbers and much more. Or they are on the playground with their grandchildren and there’s that weird guy with a camera taking pictures of the little ones. Maybe nothing to hide but really something to protect.

Then give me your house key.

Ask them to unlock their phone and give it to me. If they have nothing to hide from me, then they truly have nothing to hide from anyone since I probably dont hold power over them (nor do I care to).

If they say yes, I show them that im going through their photos, location history, browsing history, texts, emails, all the usual suspects for surveilance. If they’re ok with all of that, then by God they truly have nothing to hide.

If they say no, I ask them why. Try to let them find the answer for themselves.

Most just refuse, which is a good reminder to them that everyone has some secrets to keep. Even if they’re completely innocuous.

“We require privacy not to conceal our own wrong doing, but to protect against people who would abuse their authority to pry into our lives and do us harm by misrepresenting what they find.”

He blames me that mother forgot her phone’s and Google password because I recommended against it being a word.

That was kinda shit guidance. Shouldn’t be relying on memory at all except for maybe a single password to a password manager. A password can be written down & stored securely.

Moreover, passwords are shit when they could be using passkeys. Passkeys are more secure, aren’t memorized, & google accepts them. Decent password managers store them.

As for privacy & security: not your problem. They can leave their shit wide open to attack & deal with identity theft & fraud the hard, expensive way.

EVERYONE has stuff to hide.

It may not be illegal, but there are a lot of stuff I don’t want to be public knowledge, as it would be highly embarrassing if they got out.

This is the same for everyone.

Then we need to discuss the illegal stuff, I am talking about stuff you wont even realize is illegal, or things that you did decades ago that is so minor that you never even thought about them.

In my generation, one classic part of growing up was torrenting just about anything you could find. I never considered it illegal at the time, but I sure as hell wouldn’t want the popo start investigating me.

I see it like this, if you have nothing to hide, you can’t be trusted.

As for your father’s misplaced blame, he should be annoyed that neither of you wrote down the password, not that you used a word as a password.

Easiest way to explain privacy imo is simply just saying: “If you have nothing to hide, then why do you shut the door when you go to the bathroom?”

Years ago, I heard a lecture by the guy who investigated the case referred to in the article below. Thieves and con artists are a legitimate concern. Or at least they should be.

From the Batesville Daily Guard - Batesville, Arkansas

After fighting identity theft for seven years, country singer/songwriter David Lynn Jones is ready to take back his life.

During that time, Jones, on paper, was three people – and at times, four.

“Two guys were playing me,” Jones said. “It’s unimaginable, until you go through it . . . that someone who doesn’t even look like you can steal your identity. The damage,” he said, “is incalculable.”

Jones may be ready to sing “I Feel A Change Comin’ On” again. That’s the title of one of his singles from his heyday.

During better times, Jones released four acclaimed albums – “Hard Times on Easy Street” (1987), “Wood, Wind and Stone” (1990), “Mixed Emotions” (1992) and “Play by Ear” (1994).

His charting singles include “Bonnie Jean (Little Sister)” which was also a popular music video on television, “High Ridin’ Heroes” (with Waylon Jennings), “The Rogue” and “Tonight in America.”

He may be best-known for writing “Living in the Promiseland,” a No. 1 hit for Willie Nelson.

While Jones kept writing songs during the past seven years, he could not release them because the identity theft culprits were getting his royalty checks by having the checks sent to their address. Much of the time, that address was in Colorado.

Now, Jones and his wife, Illa, who live east of Cave City, are looking forward to teaming up to record and release a new album.

He also has unreleased albums from the past that can now be put before the public.

“There’s five (previously recorded David Lynn Jones) albums that never were released,” Jones said. He plans to make those available to buyers on the Internet within the next few months.

Fans should be patient, though, because it may take quite awhile, he said.

In February, Baxter County sheriff’s investigators arrested Danny James Sullivan, who was working at a McDonald’s in Mountain Home under the name David Lynn Jones.

Sullivan was also drawing disability checks from the government under his own name while working at the McDonald’s under Jones’ name. His aliases include Danny J. Bass and Danny J. Rader.

A day later, acting on a tip, the alleged mastermind of the plot, Janis Rae Wallace, was arrested at a home in Fayetteville. Wallace is also known as Janis French and Janis Rae Jones, the name she used while posing as the real Davis Lynn Jones’ “wife.”

She’s even booked into the jail as Janis Rae Jones.

Wallace and Sullivan, both 51, remain in jail – she, on a $500,000 bond and he, on a $200,000 bond.

They are each charged with nine counts of felony financial identity fraud, according to an affidavit filed with the charges and signed by sheriff’s Sgt. Bob Buschbacher.

The information filed with the charges and in arrest reports matches the story told by Jones – the real Jones.

“Those are all federal charges,” Jones said.

The theft started, Jones said, when Wallace stole his driver’s license while working for him.

“At the time, my Social Security number was the same as my driver’s license number, and with just that information, they infiltrated my life,” Jones said.

Soon, he was getting no mail. It was all going to the fake David Lynn Jones’ address via an address change. The mail included preapproved credit card applications that the thieves filled out; after they maxed out the cards, they reported them stolen.

“Among the stolen items via mail were personal checks and business checks from music royalties the victim had earned as a songwriter and musician,” Sgt. Buschbacher said.

“They had ‘me’ moved to Colorado; my phone was shut off,” Jones said. “This was back in 2002 . . . . By the time we realized what was going on, we couldn’t get it stopped. They wound up with my royalty checks from publishing music,” including royalties from “Living in the Promiseland.”

Buschbacher said that in the beginning, to further the identity theft scheme, Sullivan, posing as Jones, filled out an identity theft passport request victim information sheet and submitted it to the attorney general’s office. Then, he obtained an Arkansas driver’s license in the victim’s name.

Meanwhile, Jones’ elaborate and well-known recording studio at Bexar was stripped of all its expensive equipment.

“I still own the studio,” Jones said Saturday. “It’s for sale and has been for some time. These people had gone out there and took down the for sale sign and put up no trespassing signs. They were drawing money out of my checking account, which eventually caused me to be overdrafted,” he said. His interest rates were doubled because of a bad credit rating.

And to add insult to injury, Wallace convinced people who dealt with Jones financially that someone was trying to steal her identity (“She was speaking as my ‘wife,’” Jones said). So, those who could have helped would not even listen to the real Jones.

“When we started talking to credit card companies and banks, they didn’t believe it (was me),” Jones said.

The crowning portion of the identity theft scheme was yet to come.

“They started telling everybody I’d been in a horrible accident in Colorado and I was in a wheelchair and I couldn’t play and sing anymore,” Jones said. “She even wrote a letter and sent it to all of my family saying that.”

Since he had been busy with his work during the earlier part of the problems and hadn’t been in touch with family members regularly, several of them even believed the accident story, he said.

“My mother (Verna Jones) passed away during all of this and we were trying to make funeral arrangements,” and a check his brother mailed to help with those expenses went to Colorado into the thieves’ hands, Jones said. “Even my own brother didn’t understand what was going on. I told him I never got the check . . . . It’s so crazy when you’re actually experiencing it.”

The investigation revealed that Wallace and Sullivan obtained a Social Security card, a Colorado identification card and the Arkansas driver’s license, all in the name of David Lynn Jones. Wallace then obtained power of attorney over Jones, claiming he was mentally disabled due to the fake “accident.”

Wallace and Sullivan were even filing joint federal income tax returns as Mr. and Mrs. David Lynn Jones. Those returns were filed in 2006, 2007 and 2008.

Jones said as soon the investigation revealed the first name of the suspect, he knew who was behind the scheme even though she was giving her last name as Jones. Still, the identity thieves stayed one step ahead of authorities for a long time.

Before being arrested, Wallace and Sullivan were trying to get the title to some land Jones owns in Baxter County, authorities said.

A break in the case occurred 15 months ago when Wallace, as Mrs. Jones, and Sullivan, as Jones, applied in person for an identity theft passport at the Arkansas Attorney General’s Office.

As soon as Wallace and Sullivan were arrested, investigators obtained search warrants for their houses. Jones said several items found in their homes could only have been obtained by their breaking into his home east of Cave City, where he and his wife have lived for five years.

“We’ve known for years things were being pilfered, things moved around. They were hanging out in the woods, watching for us to leave (so they could get into the house).”

Investigators found pictures and other items taken from inside Jones’ house, as well as photos of the house taken from the driveway.

Jones said officers on the trail of the crooks had been advising Jones for months to be alert and stay well-armed, because one possible logical next step could be to eliminate Jones and his wife, so the identity thieves “could become us. That could have been the last (planned) step,” particularly with them applying for the identity passport, Jones said. “Who knows what would have happened next?”

He has high praise for the attorney general’s agent who felt something was wrong when Wallace and Sullivan approached him about getting that passport.

“That’s what got them caught,” Jones said.

The agent was suspicious enough to go into another room and look for pictures of Jones on the Internet. The pictures did not match the man claiming to be Jones.

“If it had not been for the attorney general’s office, it’d still be going on,” Jones said. “The attorney general’s officer said it was the worst case he’d ever seen in all his years of investigating identity theft.”

Baxter County Sheriff John Montgomery said the investigation involved personnel from the attorney general’s office, the Social Security Administration’s Inspector General’s office and the sheriff’s office.

Jones said he expects he still has years to go to clear the damage to his name.

When asked what the identity theft has cost him, Jones did not give a dollar figure. Instead, he said quietly, “It’s cost me seven years of my life.”

2 big things for me.

First is that everyone, and I mean absolutely everyone has something they want to hide. People assume “I’m not a violent person or a criminal” except yes you are, and you’ve done something. A great example is everyone in the US speeds, absolutely everyone. Does that mean you want every office to know every instance of you speeding if you get pulled over? So, yes everyone has something they’d rather not say.

Second is more of an example of you should be allowed to go places without everyone knowing. The example was about 5 years ago police used location data to find a person who broke into someone’s home. Problem is that the location data they used returned one person who happened to be on that street around the same time. They were riding their bike down the street. To the police they had the person there, they had proof, it was good enough. Except it wasn’t, and he obviously wasn’t the person they were looking for. Location data put him there though, and sold him out. So maybe not the best thing for whoever to know exactly where you are at any given time.

As for encryption, ask him for his porn history. If he gets upset, just say “why it’s not illegal”

but, I agree with the other person. If you’re dad is like mine and countless others, you’re not fighting against him but propaganda. If that’s the case, you aren’t going to win this. The only winning is turning off the source.