When I accepted a new position as communication and marketing manager in a new online privacy tech company, I was very excited to tell about this new adventure to my friends and relatives. But soon I realized that they did not really connect with the cause, as they would tell me…
“I have nothing to hide. Why would this concern me?”
Truth is, online privacy concerns everyone. Companies and people alike. But focusing on the people aspect here, there are the two main reasons why you should care about your online privacy, even if you are not President Trump.
We are being watched and tracked each time we go online
Since the 2000s came along, we all very rapidly embraced the convenience of our newly acquired digital lives. Being able to video call our relatives from a different country via Skype, use Google’s fantastic array of services like Gmail, search whatever info we are looking for on search engines, being able to look at the best map itinerary in Google Maps when going on a get-away weekend, all that for free ?!
This is post is not about the activist/whistle-blower or person present in oppressive countries, this is a totally different topic, and these people are on a different scale of online privacy, where any mistake could cost them there life. I am here talking about the average Joe, who has nothing to hide.
Or so you thought… because the truth is we are the product. Online, nothing is free. So when you sign up for a “free service”, be sure to tell yourself, it is not free. You always give something in exchange. And that something is your information, a non-quantifiable amount of personal data. An experience from the New York Times shows that a user visiting 47 sites in one day got tracked by hundreds of tracker.
Free email services like Gmail reads and scans our emails to better profile our consumer’s habits. And it does not matter that after the scandal went out, they changed their privacy terms. You didn’t read them before, and we are just an update away from them changing them again.
We are the product — Online, nothing is free.
This tracking is motivated by two reasons:
- Marketing companies use this information to better tailor and serve us relevant ads. The more relevant the ad is to our consumer’s behaviour, the most likely we will end up buying the product being advertised. If Google knows you went and check out TV screen through your browsing history, then that means you are already thinking about buying one, making you a potential customer. So showing you an ad for a TV (maybe the one you already looked at without purchasing it), means you are more likely to buy. The opposite being watching an AD on TV on prime time, and the advertiser not being sure who watches the ad. In the end, it all comes down to higher ROI;
- Ever wondered how you are getting so much spam? That’s because you used your email to sign up for something, and your email was sold. The collection of information online is also a great source of income for certain companies that are in the sole business of selling more or less targeted email lists. Which leads to my second point…
The more information you leave out-there, the more likely your identity will get compromised
The average online user has signed up for about 367 online services. With each of these services, the user gives a different type of information. It could be a credit card number on a ticketing platform, an address on another, a social security number on another, sensitive health information, where you were born, etc…
All internet services can be subjected to data leak (which most of the time is due to human error) or cyber-attack. So it is logical, that the more information and accounts you leave out there, the most likely your personal data can be harvested. Thus it is the accumulation of all the different type of information left out there that makes your identity sensitive. Put together, it gives a very clear idea of who you are.
“It is the accumulation of all the different type of information left out there that makes your identity sensitive.”
When there is a breach, you can replace some of the information that leaked, before someone abuses it. Let it be a password of an account (please regularly check by entering your email on https://haveibeenpwned.com/ ) or a credit card number that you can cancel. Yes, it is a hassle, but you can change it. However, data points like your birth date, your address, an illness you had or a pre-existing condition, these are info that will be forever true.
It is therefore primordial to be careful on which platform we register, but also to be very mindful what kind of information we give and let out. Another great practice is to sign out and delete any account we know we won’t be using after having used the said platform. Like this, you are deleting your own info of a platform before any breach happens.
There are a lot of tools out there to help digital citizens without necessarily being a programmer. (I will soon write about healthy digital practice). But the most important is to be mindful with our information and be part of the conversation. Last year, the new regulation GDPR came into action, giving the user the “right to be forgotten”. This year it is CCPAin the US. These allow the user to ask any company what information they have on him/her and if he/she wishes, to ask for this information to be deleted.
You can see that we all have something to hide. It is just a matter of what we are willing to give for what. It is therefore imperative to be part of the conversation about online privacy, talk to your local government representative, so they know you care. Because if you don’t, then why should they, and why should anything change?
*Originally published in Medium.