Why you should care about your Privacy

Why you should care about privacy even if you have 'nothing to hide'
You're sitting in a coffee shop, talking to a friend. Suddenly, the waiter shows up, asks for your phone numbers, and wants to know who else you're friends with and what you're talking about. Do you provide the requested information? Would you provide the information if, in turn, you wouldn't have to pay the bill? Is it safe to assume that you have something to hide if you don’t enter into this deal?
Internet users who disclose their privacy in order to access free online services often do so on the grounds of having "nothing to hide". However, as closer inspection reveals, this position is untenable. Having nothing to hide might be a desirable state of affairs, but it doesn't entail that it's safe to disclose one's privacy.
If you don't feel comfortable providing the requested information to the waiter, that doesn't mean you have something to hide. It simply means you wish to preserve the privacy you rightfully deserve. Maybe you're discussing something mundane, like the weather, but you think it's none of the waiter's business. Also, you don't know what the waiter might do with the obtained information and why he's keen on acquiring it in the first place.
If you do not carelessly disclose personal information to strangers in real life, you probably shouldn't provide the same information to online services, either. By combining several data points, it's easy to draw a detailed picture of you; one which reveals far more than each data point would on its own - and one that could reveal more about you than you would imagine.

• Taken from the Threema Blog on "Data Privacy Day 2019".

Since this week was the internationally celebrated "Data Privacy Day" I wanted to take the occasion to write a little bit about this highly important topic and why YOU should care.

Let us start things off with an example from the recent past, 2018 to be more exact. You may have heard of the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data scandal^[1] where personal data of millions of users was harvested without their consent and utilized by applying microtargeted advertisments for political campaigns like the US presidential election in 2016. Besides Facebook's massive fall in stock price and Mark Zuckerberg's testimony in front of the United States Congress, this scandal also led to the shutdown of Cambridge Analytica. However most of the staff as well as the idea behind the business model will most likely continue to live on in its successor Emerdata (and probably in many other companies). There is but one good thing: This has also been a major eye-opener to many people that the lack of privacy (and security) might actually be an alerting issue that has to be addressed.

The question remains, why do people still not care about their data and privacy online? Unfortunately I do not have an answer to that, which is based on facts or backed up by some kind of studies, I do have an educated guess nevertheless and that is that people just don’t actually know what happens to their data and how it is effectively used. Because let us be honest, saying you have nothing to hide is just an excuse for being too lazy to inform or change yourself and not an actual and valid point. In the following I will try to shed some light on the dark practices of data analysis and what subsequently can be done with the gained information. Keep in mind though that this is NOT a scientific paper, so I might over-simplify some things in order to not confuse the reader.

The rapid technological advance over the past few years has not only made it possible to store the data of billions of people but also analyse it at the same time. Buzzwords like "Big Data" and "Artificial Intelligence" suddenly appeared in newspapers and on television. Everybody is talking about it, yet hardly anyone really knows what it exactly is. This is where I want to begin, with "Big Data" and "Artificial Intelligence". For the sake of simplicity let us not talk too much about "Big Data" and go with the simple definition by the German Wikipedia and say that it is data that is generally too big to be analysed with conventional methods manually. Now that we have defined "Big Data" we can focus on the even more popular and misunderstood topic "Artificial Intelligence". I do not want to go into details about A.I. in general since that is not the point of this post, if you want to read more I would recommend you to read the post "The AI Revolution: The Road to Superintelligence" by WaitButWhy.^[2] When we are talking about A.I. in social media we are actually talking about either predicting certain attributes of a user e.g. "does the user vote for party A?"^[3] or we are trying to put users into groups based on their attributes e.g. "Users that have attribute a will likely vote for party A".^[4] The predictions are made by statistical models that are based on the user data of all or a subset of users. Quite logically more and better predictions can be produced if more (good) data is available. As an example let us look at what Cambridge Analytica did, they used the data to group users based on likes and other information from Facebook into a psychological spectrum which is then used for targeted political advertising to manipulate them in favour of their candidate if possible.^[5][6]

Microtargeted advertising and manipulation is just one example though, your data can also be used to:

• Track who you hang out with and who you are friends with which eventually does not only give away your data but also the data of other people (even ones that are not on social media)
• Track your interests and only showing you what you would like to see (which seems like a good thing, doesn't it? It doesn't differentiate between true or false though and thus creating these "bubbles" everybody lives in)
• Track your political views and beliefs even if you do not state them which might not only be interesting to politicians but also to your employer, insurances, neighbour...
• Track your vitals which would be interesting for health insurances e.g. you don't do sports -> higher insurance
• Track your driving behaviour which would be interesting for car insurances e.g. you drive often at night -> higher risk of accident -> higher insurance (generally insurances would be really interested in your data)
• Track when you are home or not which would be interesting for criminals e.g. a robbery during your vacation

Furthermore, this is only one side of the coin, gradually reducing our privacy also means more and more surveillance. By the state, by secret services and eventually by people and/or companies who may have access to these surveillance services. It also gives rise to censorship, easy to use propaganda machinery and generally promotes mass-manipulation. I guess, I don't have to explain why these things are bad.

Last but not least the lack of privacy protection usually goes hand in hand with security issues. Just as an example, Whatsapp was using unencrypted or not sufficiently encrypted messages for a long time even when taken over by Facebook. Even today Whatsapp is not open source which basically means we have to BELIEVE that their end-to-end encryption is working properly.

Simply, move away from popular but data intensitive services. Here are some of my favourite alternatives:

• ProtonMail: Secure email that is end-to-end encrypted. Also has a contact manager and calendar & cloud storage is planned for the future. Also it is FREE!
  Get it here: protonmail.com
• Threema and Telegram: End-to-end encrypted messaging that is NOT affiliated with Facebook. Telegram also has lots of cool features! Threema is available for a one-time payment of 3,49€. Telegram is FREE!
  Get Threema here: threema.ch
  Get Telegram here: telegram.org
• Standard Notes: End-to-end encrypted, open-source notes app for all platforms. Offers FREE and paid plans!
  Get it here: standardnotes.org
• pCloud: End-to-end encrypted cloud storage hosted in Switzerland. Provides FREE and payed lifetime accounts!
  Get pCloud here: pcloud.com
• tresorit: End-to-end encrypted sending of files of up to 5 GB for FREE. Also provides cloud services starting from 8,33€/month.
  Send files here: send.tresorit.com
  Cloud here: tresorit.com
• ProtonVPN: Encrypts your internet traffic. Offers FREE servers as well as paid plans!
  Get it here: protonvpn.com
• DuckDuckGo: Does not track your searches!
  Use it here: duckduckgo.com
• Firefox: FREE open-source browser that protects privacy!
  Get Firefox here: firefox.com
• 1Password: Generate and save unique passwords for all your accounts which strengthens security & your privacy! Offers from 2.99$/month!
  Get 1Password here: 1password.com

Also check out this site which basically sums up my recommendations: privacyheroes.io

I know how hard it can be to change and leave the things behind we got used to. Just start with small steps like changing your mail. You don't have to do everything at once. Moreover, even if you stay with Facebook, Whatsapp and Co., just keep in mind what is happening with your data and be careful of what you share. You could also restrict the permissions of your mobile apps, Facebook doesn't need to know where you are all the time. Neither does Whatsapp or Instagram. Lastly, no matter if you use Chrome, Firefox or any other browser, do yourself the favour and use an adblocker like uBlock Origin.

• [1] Wikipedia: Facebook-Cambridge Analytica Data Scandal
• [2] The AI Revolution: The Road to Superintelligence - WaitButWhy
• [3] Wikipedia: Supervised Learning
• [4] Wikipedia: Unsupervised Learning
• [5] Das Magazin: Ich habe nur gezeigt, dass es die Bombe gibt
• [6] Webarchive: Ich habe nur gezeigt, dass es die Bombe gibt

Some more links:

• Wikipedia: End-To-End Encryption
• Wikipedia: Data Privacy Day
• Check if you have an account that has been compromised in a data breach