TL;DR: someone went through emails I thought were private collected the email addresses and sold them to linkedin who offered me these addresses as possible contacts I should Invite. Several of these people have passed away, I feel violated.
I think everyone should care about online privacy and so do others like the EFF. Which is why they collect #privacystorys on twitter.
Online privacy has mattered to me for a long time not only since watching Citizen Four or Democracy or reading Little Brother.
I started thinking that privacy must be important when bringing PGP outside the US was considered “munitions export without a license” in the early 90s . And every time someone wanted to forbid encryption after that. Just this week I wrote an article on how to improve online privacy. Oh the irony.
When I talk to people about why it is so important that they should care about their privacy, the most common reaction is:
“Why should I care? I have nothing to hide.”
And my answer is always the same also: “Everyone has something to hide.”
We all have secrets, we just don’t always realize what they are. And in this age of technology all of these secrets are constantly in danger of getting into the wrong hands.
Here’s just a few examples that have already happened to me this year. Read on to see all the stuff I thought wasn’t going to be a problem and now I wish I had protected my privacy better. Continue reading “Privacy – Why I care!”