Why people feel that internet privacy is a lost cause?

Many people I meet seem to think that online privacy is a lost cause or that nobody cares and one might as well take the plunge and go with the flow!
The internet is everywhere. It is all around us. Just look around you. The Internet of Things is slowly and surely enveloping and connecting us through various touch points — Smartphones, laptops, smart TV/DVR, cars, fitness trackers, thermostats, refrigerators, smart-home companion devices like Alexa, etc. It follows you everywhere and is privy to all your searches, IM/txt/email interactions with your friends and colleagues, where you travel, when you go to work, what you shop, your thoughts, feelings and actions like a never ending movie stream. Facebook, Google, and all the ad-networks and data brokers like Experian and Acxiom, want to know everything about you so that they could “anticipate your need”. A big misconception is that with so much data being collected, my data will be lost in the ocean. I am not that interesting and why would anybody bother to look at my data. I am not that important.
More data = more “they” know about you and can anticipate your needs = less privacy. You search for a perfume on Google and you see an ad for the same perfume as you browse websites. Many people are fine with this. Well what else have you been searching or curious about? Which locations do you visit? When? Whom do you interact with? How frequently? What do they like? Soon we will get assimilated in the Matrix!
There are so many articles written by tremendous authors on internet privacy and control. But how many people really bother to read these or even after reading how many actually do something to block internet tracking or get control? Is it laziness, lack of initiative or lack of awareness? The fact that your internet browsing and social media/collaboration data can be used by employers, school admissions officers, insurance companies, car dealers, predators or anybody that wants to get an advantage over you, is something that should have most people concerned. Controlling what is private, personal or public is something most people want in their lives and feel it is a fundamental right. So why does this not extend to their internet lives? Why? Enduku? Kyon? Wèishéme? Por qué? Warum? Zachem?
So we wanted to learn more about people and what causes otherwise rational human beings to behave the way they do when it comes to taking action to protect their privacy on the internet. Are they really that crazy and lack basic commonsense? Well not true. The actions a person needs to take is a combination of being disciplined and using anti-tracking apps and privacy oriented devices/hardware. We find that the likely hood of a person to take action is a function of four key factors:
i. Awareness — level of awareness of internet privacy issues and its pervasiveness
ii. Technical knowledge — ability to research and determine effective solutions for privacy protection and control
iii. Convenience — how convenient or easy it is to understand, research, analyze and use a solution and the resultant user experience
iv. Potential adverse effect — people’s perceptions of what are the potential future consequence or adverse effects, how badly it may impact them and when (immediately or sometime in the future.) These consequences include economic, emotional or productivity impact on a short and long term basis.
Based on our observation and trying to make some simple sense of these, we find that these factors are related as follows:
1. Relationship between awareness & technical knowledge
If you chart people based on their level of awareness of internet tracking and what could be the consequences vs. their technical knowledge or know how on how to protect themselves and get control, we found that broadly speaking people could be categorized into four groups as shown below.

Segment I: Novice. They lack the awareness or the knowledge. They are addicted to the internet yet don’t question why everything is free. They don’t understand the difference between a user or a customer (see illustration.) It will take concerted effort to raise awareness and educate this segment before they take any action to protect their privacy.
Segment II: Mercenary. These are usually well educated people, especially engineers or from the IT field. Many have the computer programming skills to even write the code for creating a VPN service or tracker blocker if they desired. But don’t as they lack the awareness. Just like a mercenary fighting someone else’s war. With the right awareness, this segment could very easily move up to Segment IV and take action to protect themselves and their families from internet tracking.
Segment III: Paranoid. They are not techies but are aware of internet tracking and the future consequences and implications. They seek comprehensive privacy protection but lack the knowledge to sort through the various misleading vendor claims or privacy products available in the market. For example:
Does a VPN by itself really protect your privacy and allows you to surf or access content on the web anonymously?
No, only partially. A VPN only protects you when you are connecting into a closed network such as your office or university. For normal surfing, playing games or using apps on the web, a VPN service only prevents your Wi-FI, Internet or Mobile provider from tracking your activity (they still know your location). Once you download most websites or start using apps, they download trackers onto your device which can they identify you and begin tracking you.
This segment could easily transition to Segment IV with help on sorting through what is available and what would help them achieve comprehensive control.
Segment IV: Experts. They have both the awareness as well as the technical knowledge to hack together a solution to achieve comprehensive privacy control. These are typically people with technical knowledge as well as a healthy paranoia which leads them to research and find effective solutions.
2. Relationship between convenience and potential adverse impact
The chart below shows the willingness of people to take action to protect their privacy based on their perception of the potential adverse effects and the time to impact vs. how convenient and easy it is to understand, research, analyze, build or use a solution.

Here are the observations based on the chart.
a. If people feel that the impact of their internet activities and tracking is low then they are less likely to take any action unless the impact is felt immediately and the potential solution is very convenient.
b. When people perceive that the impact or consequences are high, then they are very likely to take some action. However the action they take is a function of how easy it is for them to put together and use a particular solution. For example, if a person wants to protect themselves but lacks the technical knowledge they will find it very frustrating to put together a basket of privacy apps and hardware. This gets worse if the user experience is very bad. So unless the impact is immediate or near term, they are more likely to abandon any efforts.
Conclusion
Recent research reports on people’s attitudes on internet privacy, like those from PEW Research and the Globalwebindex show that many people are concerned about their privacy. However the number of people concerned and taking action could be much higher if people understood the level of tracking and the potential consequences to them economically or emotionally long term. We hope that journalist and teachers take the time to research the subject carefully and completely and then help spread the awareness and educate people, parents and children on how they could protect themselves and achieve control on internet privacy.
Achieving internet privacy is not a lost cause!
