Are we confusing privacy with secrecy?

It is not unusual for decent, every-day folk to believe they have no digital privacy concerns because they have nothing to hide. But this is confusing privacy with secrecy.

Privacy is the reason you shut your bedroom curtains to the street at night, close the door behind you at a doctor's appointment and use a change room at the department store. What happens when you go to the toilet isn't a secret, but you still close the door.

The list of examples like these is endless and you can probably think of many more because privacy is a societal norm and, whether you are conscious of it or not, it forms an intrinsic part of your everyday life.

However, in the online context, privacy is often confused with secrecy due a lack of understanding and awareness about what is at risk.

For more than a decade, we've been posting our every thought, activity and interpersonal interaction online with increasing frequency. We perceive value and efficiency through connecting and integrating as many different apps and services as we can. To do this, we click “OK” to grant each app read/write permissions to the personal data stored in the other apps.

We don't read Terms & Conditions or Privacy Policies. We just accept them. In doing so, we agree to trade all our personal information for unpaid access to email and social networks.

We implicitly trust app developers and service providers. We naively assume ethical and moral behavior because so many other people are using the same apps and networks. We think the provider couldn't get away with questionable actions because we expect someone else, or the system, would hold them to account.

Behind the scenes, corporations and governments are converging technologies, building ever-more-capable networks, retaining & analyzing metadata and sharing information.

We find ourselves looking down the barrel of a future without privacy as we have historically known it. By removing the layers of abstraction between our online presence and our daily lives we make it easier for others to exploit and manipulate us, steal our identities and, possibly the scariest of all, intellectually isolate us.

We live in a world where we expect information on demand and in context; based on where we are and what we are doing.

To offer this functionality, the apps and services we expect this from depend on the collection, recording, storage, analysis and application of data and information about individuals and groups.

All of the data that is tracked is paired with Personally Identifiable Information (PII) such as your name, date of birth, address, phone number, job, tax file number/social security number, your face and even details about your partner/spouse and children.

When it is all crunched together, the data from your social networks, the apps you use, the websites you visit and general PII combine to build a very comprehensive profile of exactly who you are, what you do, what you like and who you interact with.

All of this data can be used effectively and with good intention to improve our lives.

But, it can also be used to exploit you!!

Data has an extremely high value. Your profile, once collected (legitimately or otherwise), is often sold. There is an entire industry of data brokerages who collect, crunch, analyze and sell data about you without you being aware.

Those buying the data will use it for a range of purposes, including (but not limited to) serving specific advertising to you, performing risk assessments (for example, credit or insurance risk assessment) and directly targeting you for marketing campaigns.

You still don't care about privacy? You better think twice!

Comments are welcome; contact me at Schumacher@ eitsc.com