SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the paranoia-makes-sense-if-everyone-is-out-to-get-you dept.
This is a little old but doesn't seem to have been discussed here. The Pew Research Center has released a report on privacy strategies adopted by Americans after the Snowden leaks started.
The analysis in this report is based on a Pew Research Center survey conducted between November 26, 2014 and January 3, 2015 among a sample of 475 adults, 18 years of age or older.
Concern about the surveillance programs is in the 30% range.
- 39% say they are “very concerned” or “somewhat concerned” about government monitoring of their activity on search engines.
- 38% say they are “very concerned” or “somewhat concerned” about government monitoring of their activity on their email messages.
- 37% express concern about government monitoring of their activity on their cell phone.
- 31% are concerned about government monitoring of their activity on social media sites, such as Facebook or Twitter.
- 29% say they are concerned about government monitoring of their activity on their mobile apps.
A fraction of users have changed their behaviour.
- 18% of the Americans who are aware of the surveillance programs say they have changed the way they use their email accounts “somewhat” or a “great deal.”
- 17% say they have changed the way they use search engines.
- 15% say they have changed the way they use social media.
- 15% say they have changed the way they use their cell phones.
- 13% say they have changed the way they use mobile apps.
- 13% say they have changed the way they use text messages.
- 9% say they have changed the way they use their landline phone.
Spreading information about the programs seems to help change behaviour
Those who are more likely to have changed their behaviors include the people who have heard “a lot” about government surveillance (38% say they have changed a great deal/somewhat in at least one of these activities), those who are at least somewhat concerned about the programs (41% have changed at least one activity), and those who are concerned about government monitoring of their use of social media, search engines, cell phones, apps, and email.
The full 37 page PDF is available to everyone and Bruce Schneier has also written some good commentary.
(Score: 1) by kadal on Saturday April 18 2015, @04:07AM
Well yes, to protect your privacy, you have to switch from unsecured to secured networks. That said, at least on Android, things are pretty seamless. TextSecure can deal with SMS, MMS and OTR over their network. So you can have it handle all that, just use TextSecure instead of your normal Messaging app. With RedPhone installed, if you dial someone (who has RedPhone installed) using the normal dialer, you get a prompt to use encryption. Doesn't get much more seamless than that....
If you expect google, apple etc. to move to default end-to-end encryption, then you'll be waiting for a long time. Plus, all their stuff is closed source, so you don't know if it's siphoning off the cleartext somewhere.