Grant Sidaway, Seniornet executive officer, 65

Lurker or oversharer? I’m not on Facebook a lot. I set up significant controls from the outset. I’m old – I’ve been around long enough to know that if anything is free, there’s always a catch. It’s only for family purposes. I had a birthday, people congratulated me, I posted some photos. That’s lovely, but that’s as far as it goes. People that know me will call me and we will visit each other.

I use the Dominion Post check – would I be comfortable with anything I do or say being reported in The Dominion Post? And if I can give myself a tick there, I’m happy to do anything on the internet.

What’s in the bag? There’s nothing much in my Facebook profile – four videos, half a dozen pictures. I’m married and I like going to football and that sort of stuff is profiled in there. Does it cause me any angst? No. I looked at the ad words and subsequently deleted a few – don’t know why I had one called women’s issues! I’ll probably go back in a month’s time and see are those settings still in place.

The Google data was really interesting – location services, there was a hell of a lot in there. I travelled to the UK – it was like going back in time. Oh, I remember going to that restaurant, that was lovely. I had forgotten what time I went there. All that detail was unbelievably astounding.

In my view, the positive aspects of social media far outweigh the negative aspects, particularly for older people who can be isolated. connecting with friends overseas, to organise events. I have gmail for both school and personal. I watch a lot of movie trailers on YouTube and upload short videos for friends or school. I use Google drive quite a bit, and Google classroom.

Katie: I don’t use Facebook much, mainly for admin groups. Socially I don’t use it much to post things. I’m quite conscious of what photos and things I put up there. I use gmail as my main email address – I don’t think too much about privacy for current impenetrable screeds.

That’s one of two priority changes suggested by Privacy Commissioner John Edwards, who has deleted his Facebook account following the data breach. He rejects marketer James Richard’s view that privacy is an illusion.

‘‘Has the horse bolted? Do we care anymore? Is privacy dead? I don’t believe any of those things are true.’’

The second is robust regulation to protect data privacy and security, including significant penalties – something New Zealand currently lacks.

Enforcement is likely to require international consensus. However, Edwards does not accept industry protestations that tracking data breaches would be just too hard.

‘‘I’m calling out double standards. They say it’s too hard, but actually it’s not too hard when you’re trying to protect your new movie, or Rihanna’s new single or whatever.’’

Ko is leading a $12 million government-funded cyber security project called Stratus, to return control of data to the people it belongs to.

Ko argues real control would require three things: a way of tracking your own data, and receiving notifications if someone tries to access it; keeping data that. On YouTube I mainly listen to music – not things I’d be concerned about other people knowing. What’s in the bag? Elyse: 1.4GB of Facebook data, including friends’ cellphone numbers, complete Messenger conversations and about 40 companies who have uploaded her contact list, including games like Candy Crush she can’t remember ever playing.

15 folders of Google data, each 2GB: Email, YouTube history, contacts.

‘‘I’m probably on Facebook a lot! The ad topics you could probably take from pages I’ve liked. The YouTube history – I don’t see the problem. They use that to recommend other videos and sometimes you want that. In the end I’m not all that worried about it. Generally it’s computer programmes going through this anyway. And if there was a person looking at my personal page, there’s not that much they are going to find of interest, except for marketing things.

‘‘We do need more clarity about who does use your stuff. It’s probably in the terms and conditions but that’s hard to explain to a 13-year-old. I think it steps over the line with political campaigns, but in the end I’m not that bothered about programmes seeing what I’ve done.’’

Katie: 670MB of Facebook data, including unfamiliar video, two seconds of audio that sounds like breathing and an audio clip she recorded on her phone but never shared to Facebook. It also says Instagram has uploaded her contact list – she doesn’t have an Instagram account.

‘‘It’s interesting how they’ve got every single message you’ve ever sent – I think I’m going to be a lot more careful about what I send. In terms of Google reading your emails – I think it would be great if you were more aware of that and had the option to opt out. I did look at trying to opt out of customised advertising. I think you’ve got so much data – who is going to actually trawl through that and use it against you? I think there’s definitely reason to be cautious about what you share with Google and Facebook, but you have to keep it in perspective.’’ encrypted while it’s analysed (it can be done at present, but slows processes down); implementing a kill switch, so that when Jennifer Lawrence discovers her nude photos have been hacked, she can immediately retrieve them.

Gunasekara likes the new European law’s requirement for privacy by design, and privacy by default, putting the onus back on developers.

Richard argues for better education, so people understand what they are agreeing to, and can see through things like personalised political messages.

In the end, though, every internet user will have to decide how much of themselves they’re prepared to sell to pay for the convenience of freely connecting with family and friends, sharing and using their documents wherever they are, and getting journey times based on current traffic.

‘‘I would love to have a medical chip embedded in me with my personal history,’’ Richard says.

‘‘If I was ever knocked unconscious, hit by a car, someone could pick me up, scan it, and know everything.

‘‘But there’s a downside to that – my insurance company is going to know all about my health.

‘‘There is a tradeoff. There always is.’’