Part 1: Why be More Private?
This is the first in what I hope to be a series of posts on digital privacy. I’m embarking on a journey of exploration to uncover what privacy is, why privacy is important, and how one can increase their own privacy. I’ll run experiments with my own life, testing and implementing various strategies of identity concealment. I don’t foresee a complete disappearance from the world but instead, I wish to better understand the value of privacy and be more mindful of when I am exposed.
What is Privacy?
“Privacy is the power to selectively reveal oneself to the world.”
— A Cypherpunk’s Manifesto by Eric Hughes
When we meet a stranger on the street, we’re not offering up our home address and phone number right off the bat. We’ll exchange pleasantries and, only if we’ve agreed to converse further might we exchange names. If we have common interests, we might exchange phone numbers or email addresses. As the relationship blossoms, our mutual trust grows and we reveal more about our identities. Perhaps our hobbies, work, families, or friends. If things progress, we might invite the other person to our home and give them our address. At each stage of the relationship, we decide what to reveal to the other person. “Privacy is the power to selectively reveal oneself to the world.”
In meatspace (the physical world), most of us are pretty selective in revealing ourselves. Even acquiring goods and services can be very private. If we buy milk from the corner store, we can choose to pay cash and not even have to reveal our name.
This is not the case in cyberspace. If I sign up for a free email account with Google, I’m asked for a name, birth date, gender, phone number, and a secondary email address. If I buy something from Amazon, I’m asked for a home address and a credit card. As I further interact with these companies, they automatically learn and record who my friends are, what I shop for, and what sites I visit on the internet.
Why do we reveal so much more about ourselves online than we do in the physical world? Maybe we don’t have to.
Privacy is a Spectrum of Trade-offs
It’s tempting to think of privacy as an all-or-nothing binary choice — you’re either private or not — but I don’t think that’s true. Similar to physical fitness, I believe privacy lies on a spectrum.
At one end of the spectrum of fitness is the infamous couch potato and at the other end is the high-level marathon runner. Many of us fall somewhere in between. Could we all increase our fitness to the level of an elite marathoner? Perhaps, but there are trade-offs. It takes years of dedication, thousands of hours of training, and plenty of weeks running 100+ miles. For most of us, the trade-offs aren’t worth it and we’re perfectly happy somewhere in the middle of the fitness spectrum.
To be at an elite level of privacy (nearly disappear), one can expect to commit a huge amount of time and upwards of $15k per year as cyber security expert, Jameson Lopp describes in his post about implementing his own privacy protection plan.
Thankfully most of us don’t need to disappear, we just need to get off the couch and gain a little more control over what we reveal to the world.
Why be More Private?
“The internet is forever.”
— Anon
My goal is to limit how much information companies gather about me. Doing anything online typically means handing over all kinds of descriptive details, with and without my knowledge. It’s not just the obvious things like name, address, and phone number. Information such as location, contacts, shopping habits, social media posts, email messages, and texts can all be used to create an identifying profile. This online profile is a valuable commodity that can be stolen by thieves, sold to other companies, or given to governments, foreign and domestic, looking for criminals or political enemies.
There’s that old saying, “The internet is forever.” What seems innocent now, might be trouble in the future.
Part 1: Why be More Private?
Tags: digital privacy privacy