Often, when questioned about weak online privacy measures, most will respond that they have nothing to hide. While that is a valid argument, what many do not realize is that online privacy is more complex than it may appear at first glance.
A good example to consider is that of Jameson Lopp, a Bitcoin engineer and the Chief Technology Officer at CASA—a cryptocurrency startup.
Lopp’s swatting incident
Sometime in 2017, Lopp woke up on a normal Monday and drove to the YMCA to play racquetball. Once he was done, he tweeted that he was up and enjoying his morning.
On driving back to his neighborhood, he found law enforcement camped on his doorstep. Someone had called 911 on his address claiming that an attacker had shot someone, was holding others hostage and that the door was rigged with explosives.
He was able to explain everything, and after realizing it was a swatting incident, the law enforcement officers left. However, had he been inside the house, Lopp admitted that things might have gone very wrong.
In a blog post to explain the incident, Lopp said that he believed that the key reason the attacker chose to attack at that particular time was because of the tweet which made them wrongly believe that Lopp was at home.
Therein lies the complexity of online privacy. Like Lopp, you might not be doing anything wrong, but because someone has access to your life through your digital footprint, they can cause you harm. Below are other risks connected to poor online privacy practices.
1. You can trigger the wrong person
Triggering the wrong person is tied to your social media use. Not everyone who follows you on Twitter or Instagram might share your values or what you believe. You might post something one of your followers considers a slight, and they may decide to retaliate.
If you have poor online privacy practices, then they can easily figure out your location by looking at the location tags on your posts. Moreover, they can use Facebook to find out your exact address.
2. Identity theft
In 2017, 1 in 15 people were victims of identity theft, which equaled 16.7 million victims across the world. Experts have said that the number is on the rise and that in 2019, the number will be higher.
Identity theft involves a malicious person collecting so much information about you online that they can effectively pretend to be you and convince others. Armed with the information, they can withdraw money from your account, use your credit cards, commit a crime, and so on.
The key way that those who steal identities collect information is via your browsing activity. They will track what interests you, which sites you visit, your behavior online, etc. Once they have enough information, all they have to do is exploit a weakness, and you cease to exist.
Note that there isn’t a single foolproof solution one can purchase to protect themselves against identity theft. The only way to reduce the chances of being a victim is via good online privacy practices.
Examples of good online privacy practices
One, you can consider using private web browsers, which helps ensure that you are not freely handing information to governments and giant tech companies. Keep in mind these giant companies will eventually sell your data to third parties, and you won’t know to whom your data will ultimately trickle down to.
Second, look into the benefits of using a reputable virtual private network. A VPN hides you when you are online and masks your online activity, which makes it very difficult to track you.
Third, be careful when geotagging your posts. Avoid doing so in areas that make it easy to figure out where you live or the areas you most frequent. Closely related to this, monitor what you post, and avoid over-revealing things about your life.
Finally, consider using private search engines that do not track your search traffic. Admittedly, with private search engines, you might lose out on personalization—the kind that Google offers—but you might save yourself from greater trouble in the future.
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