The easy answer is that I have a paranoid mind. I think of outrageous scenarios and work that scenario backwards to find the possible ways to get to that outcome.
I’ve done Cognitive Processing Therapy to work through some of the non privacy related thoughts, called stuck points. The goal of the therapy was to challenge the stuck points and replace the thoughts with more realistic ones. One of the challenge questions is to ask if I’m confusing something that is POSSIBLE with something that is LIKELY.
The privacy thoughts are harder to get rid of though. There are data breaches weekly, if not daily. There are companies whose whole business model is to collect data on anybody and everybody, profile us, and sell that profile to advertisers, insurance companies, and law enforcement. Their goal is to link the various online identities to the offline person. Based on past evidence, it’s only a matter of time before all of that collected data is stolen or left unprotected.
I realize that we can’t hide from the big tech companies, such as Google and Facebook, who run the internet and the technology that we use every day. Even as I type this, and debate whether to publish, I think about how I’m exposing my writing style and common spelling mistakes, which could help in identifying and linking future or past writing to me that I hoped to keep anonymous.
My threat model wants to limit the data that the tech companies collect, but my real concern is people who know me, directly or indirectly, getting access to my information to use against me in any way, even it’s just knowing the brand of toilet paper that I prefer.
To defeat an enemy you have to know him/her. To know your enemy you have to study them. To be able to defeat a friend turned enemy it makes sense to start studying them today. What better way than to observe and remember everything about them. And if you never need the information, nobody was hurt in the collection.
Stuck point: The people around me want to collect my information to use against me at some point in the future.
Scenario: I get into an argument with random person while playing Fortnite and they threaten to call the SWAT team to my house.
They Google my Xbox gamertag and find that I use the same username on Goodreads. My public Goodreads profile includes my first name, last name, and zip code. Voter record databases are publicly available in most states and include name, address, and political party, to name a few things. Not many people have the same full name living in the same zip code, so using the name and zip code found in my Goodreads profile, they compare that to the voter database and get my home address.
They have linked my online identity to the real me and my house. They can now call the police and say that there are hostages in my house.
Is this scenario, and others like it, just possible or are they likely?
I don’t have the right answer. But if I can limit the amount of personal information that I share online, hopefully I won’t have regrets when it’s too late to get that information removed.
Book recommendation: Data and Goliath by Bruce Schneier