These types of exceeding invasive products need to have their damages tested in courts. After a few lawsuits and payouts the liabilty will begin to increase and that will force companies to adapt/improve or go under.
The problem is our entire generation doesn't care about privacy. They willingly hand over everything about them to an app and care not a single drop that their government spies on them without a warrant.
> The problem is our entire generation doesn't care about privacy.
Yup -- law follows culture, not the other way around. IMHO this (cultural priorities) is at the root of other ills too, e.g. educational system and criminal justice system brokenness. I think most people genuinely do want the right thing but just aren't aware of the long-term consequences of the current approach.
Recently I thought that it would be cool if I bought a bathroom scale that would sync with my iPhone so I could keep tabs on my exercise effects.
I bought a clever looking one and took it home and was dismayed to find out the only to get it to sync was to create a "cloud account" which would supposedly allow me to "check my progress from anywhere".
I returned that one to the store and bought another - same requirement: Cloud account needed to activate. Took that back. Decided it was easier to just type the number into my phone.
Its hard for me to understand how there are so many people oblivious / ok with the constant surveillance that goes on in their lives.
One motivation for this from the vendor's point of view is that a cloud account means no NAT headaches=fewer customer service calls. I know, you don't need to talk to your scale when you're not home, but even setting up LAN-only access is beyond most civilians.
Security and privacy awareness are not wholly absent, and awareness, including among the young, can be high. The awareness is, however, highly uneven, and is quite problematic especially in how it's reflected among commercial enterprises and law.
As I've been saying for quite some time: Data are liability.
The other part to this is what can they do about it. Kids these days see riots responded to with military force. Cops kill people on sight and get off unpunished. People get imprisoned over enumerating URLs and we're trying to extradite a person to charge them with treason for revealing that the government is indeed spying on everyone.
I don't think kids these days are naive, I think they just see that trying to fight this stuff can realistically get them life in prison and/or killed.
Its not so much that it does not care, but that it has trouble converting a physical concept (close the door and you are in a private place) to the digital realm.
The problem is our entire generation doesn't care about privacy. They willingly hand over everything about them to an app and care not a single drop that their government spies on them without a warrant.