A Case for Privacy Even for People Who Have Nothing to Hide

I lost my wallet sometime ago. The cash in it were not of interest to me, nor were the cards inside as it's pretty straightforward to block them. What worried me the most was my ID in the wallet.

Identity theft is not a joke, Jim! Millions of families suffer every year!

-> Dwight Schrute

The reason is simple: Identity theft. And it's one of the main reasons I care so much about my privacy. I am not an active social media person, and I have been up to date on best security practices since I was a teenager. But even then, I got two dishwashing sponges from who knows who.

I don't think people realize how scary it is to know that someone knows your address but you don't know who that someone is. I've seen a few people tell me that at least I got free products. That would be fine had I or someone I know actually ordered them.

Then I lost my ID. Who knows what the other person could use that for. Sign up for random loan sharks? Postpaid plans? How about wreck my credit score by applying for actual bank loans and initiating hard credit checks?

It’s ridiculous. When I lost it, I legitimately considered if I would change my name. Fortunately, my country will not allow the impulsive and intrusive thought to win. But I still realized how difficult it is to be private in the real world.

The Difficulty of Privacy in the Modern World

While there is a privacy law here in the Philippines, most people do not value it here. If they do, it's difficult to actually do so.

Seriously - try it. And you will realize one thing: People don't care.

First off, messaging apps. I don't care about Signal's features - no one is using it and no one I know will switch to it. It would be great if it was something like email where I could still receive messages from people I know regardless of which app I use. But the world decided that shouldn't be the case. So now I'm stuck with software where I know my conversations could be read.

At least Telegram is getting more popular in my country. But my main problem with it is that it has a reputation for everything you don't want to be associated with. That seems to be improving as more people use it but right now, it isn't good for me.

Next, look at "Have I Been Pwned?". I checked it out years ago and my details are already out there with data breaches. Being fully anonymous is not an option for me anymore because someone out there already knows my details. And those are the ones I know about. I know there are companies that have leaked my details but will not admit it.

In summary, the reason privacy is so difficult is that other people don't care. Back in the pandemic when I had to fill out contact tracing forms, I already bid my data adieu. Anyone can see it and that's how I got text scams. It's so difficult to live in the modern world without semi-trusting your data to anyone. Even if you do, you have to make contact with someone eventually who needs it. And what are you gonna do? Not give your phone number to your potential employer? Not go to YouTube (No - there are no good alternatives. Stop)? It's not feasible to just be a hermit.

What you can do to be more private

This doesn't mean though you can't at least work on a few steps to be more private. While it is incredibly difficult to be fully private, it is not hard to be partially private.

1. Curate your social media posts. Social media is toxic in many ways but on the topic of privacy, there's little good to sharing every detail about your life. Stop seeking validation so much from others by posting the fact that you got a new credit card, a new house, or that your sibling graduated. Stop. Those are all data for someone to exploit.

   I personally have stopped using most social media, but I understand why some people will not. The key here is to lessen what you share online. You can share all the cats and dogs you found, but you don't have to share it now. You can wait three or four days before posting it. You can even post that you graduated - but you didn't have to share every single detail that it is enough for someone to open a bank account under your name.

2. Use strong passwords. You're 80% of the way there to security once you start doing this. It's a cliche already so I won't go into details of why they are important. Rather, I'll go into how you can do so: Use a password manager.

   There are many options available but I recommend 1Password and Bitwarden specifically. I have used both and the only reason I use 1Password is that I like the UI better. But choose any of the two and rely on them.

   I generally do not like pen and paper passwords as well for personal reasons. but they are also an option if you are paranoid. Password managers are great though but I recommend you install "Don't F*** With Paste" extension for Chromium browsers or Firefox because some websites have the stupid idea of disallowing password pasting.

3. Use Open Source tools as much as possible. Or at the very least any of the tools here. Open Source tools can have many contributors which allow people to inspect the code itself. So if there is something that seems off, someone can just fix it or at least, raise it up.

   This doesn't mean that open source tools are automatically safe. If there's only one person doing it, it's very much possible for security vulnerabilities to appear. But large open source projects are usually very robust and secure.

   Some open source tools I do use are Miniflux for my RSS and VS Code for my coding and writing needs. But there are a lot of open source tools available that are even standards in different industries.

Conclusion

Now I want to emphasize this: simply having data will not mean you can do something useful with it. There's a lot of concerns about corporate collecting data and these are all valid. Because even if they aren't doing something malicious with it, it's only one data breach away from someone doing something with it.

I also want to reiterate: perfect isn’t my goal for privacy. I use DuckDuckGo instead of Google 80% of the time and I take very good care to use good passwords. However, going basically 100% private isn't very feasible or convenient (which is a bit sad if you think about it).

But I'm okay with good. And that's a more achievable goal.