Your Private Parts—Privacy Not Included

You are completely nude—in public. If an image is worth a thousand words, picture that. Visualize yourself not at some secluded spot of the beach but on a crowded metro. Stark naked. Uncomfortable? Most people have nothing for which they need to feel ashamed, and this being Barcelona, it’s likely there is a fair share of attractive women with all the right curves or men sporting six-packs. Certainly nothing to be embarrassed about, right? And yet everyone undoubtedly would be. Why is that? Most of us have nothing to hide—but we dress to protect ourselves. 

The imagery above should jolt your self-awareness and provoke a reaction in our society. Societal norms evolve slowly over time and today it is considered unacceptable to appear naked in public. People feel very uncomfortable with nudity. Our laws reflect those limitations and as individuals (most of us, anyway) we are protective of our nakedness and we fiercely defend this right to intimacy. But here’s the issue: society as we know it today is digital. Increasingly, most of our daily interactions occur on digital platforms, whether on social media or messaging services, or through an online presence. Of course, the physical world and its social norms still exist. We may walk down the street with our clothes on, feeling all warm and protected, but you better believe that on-line or more likely, in-app, you are stark naked—and completely unprotected.

Beyond protection, clothes serve as identifiers. We outwardly communicate who we are. In the physical world, we each choose our fashion-style and like to believe that we attract those people with whom we wish to explore further interactions and with whom hopefully, we can become acquainted and—who knows—even share our lives with. The great irony of our time is that new digital platforms and social media continue to play according to the strict conventions of the physical world. Showing any form of nudity, even something as natural as a mother breastfeeding her child, is strictly prohibited on these “family-friendly” puritanical platforms. But when it comes to your all personal information, there are no ethical limits. It’s a free-for-all. The things that make you, well, really you—your data—these digital platforms suck up all of it.

So where is this invasion of intimacy really taking place? You dress to cover your nudity while absolutely everything else about you is naively given away. Someone you don’t know knows everything about you, literally. They know where you are at any time of the day and where you have been. “But I turned off my GPS,” you proudly say, maybe unaware that your phone positions you over the cellular-network and your home Wi-Fi. Apps demand access to your private information such as location, contacts and text messages. Watch this clever piece from Forbrugerrådet Tænk the Danish Consumer Council and you’ll get the idea. 

Your internet searches reflect your hobbies, interests and your concerns, even your fears (here’s looking at you, corona). By the way, if you browse at work, your employer may also see your internet searches. So, chances are your boss already knows you are looking for a new job. Good luck with that. At home, your I.P. address that connects you to the internet, is tied to your physical location. Seen an add on your tablet recently that has convinced you that your phone is listening to your conversation? Watch the Netflix documentary, The Great Hack. Just don’t ask always-on Alexa or GoogleHome. 

Well, “I don’t have anything to hide,” you respond. Really? Here’s betting you have a lock on your front door at home. And you use a key. Is that because you are hiding something at home? Probably not. You lock your door to prevent complete strangers from walking into your house, your private environment and taking stuff. You do that because you feel you have something to protect, something of value, your personal belongings and your physical possessions. Particularly if they are high-value items, most of the physical possessions you own could probably be covered by insurance. Unless your family name is Picasso, most of these items are fully replaceable, except for sentimental possessions like your great-grandparents’ portrait. 

So, ask yourself this: do these objects in the physical world define who you are? You place great value on your physical property and possessions and keep them under lock and key, heck, maybe you even have security cameras and alarms—yet in the digital world you are willingly giving away what defines your personal life. All the things that make you unique, your identity, your data are being taken away from you and either you are still unaware of the fact, or you have done nothing to protect yourself. 

Looking for a job? Chances are your potential employer has purchased a file on you from a data broker. Data brokers make up a US$200 billion industry that aggregates offline and online information on hundreds of millions of people to create files that you cannot access or verify, even if it’s about you. The files include things like your web history, not just search but all the websites you visit, your choice of TV series, types of food you order. All innocent enough, you think—you have nothing to hide. There are different kinds of data brokers who can potentially see your political views, scraping data from your social media accounts, vehicle information and driving penalties, birth dates, your email address, telephone numbers and the numbers you contact most frequently, your education level, your occupation and your real spending power thanks to your credit card activity. Credit cards are the real tell-tale or tattle-tale: you carry one all the time and every time you use it, it leaks your whereabouts, time of day, how much you spent, where you spent the money and how frequently you spend at certain locations, then sells that information to data brokers. Investigative journalism from The Washington Post released last year reveals just how murky this industry is. 

Alice, (not her real name) is a 35 year-old Californian woman, who in her lunch-break browsed online from her work computer for “home decor” and “baby-names” also ordering a book on “nutrition.” This information was collected by a data broker with an algorithm that suggested she was pregnant. Although Alice was up for a promotion at work, this position was denied. 

You may not think so, but while you do not protect your digital self, and your kids’ digital future, someone else is making decisions about your life. The information you carelessly give away is the big data that feeds algorithms for predictive analytics, plugged into Artificial Intelligence. That free app you just installed—just take a look at the permissions you granted. Opt out here.

5 Easy Steps to Protect Yourself

Whether it’s a promotion, a job, healthcare fees or access to a mortgage, it’s time to take the future into your own hands. Introduce a few small changes to your digital habits without disrupting your life and “wise up.”

1. Change Your Messaging App Right Now

You already know how Facebook uses data, so you urgently need to look at alternatives to Whatsapp. Seriously—are you using this app to share information at your kids’ school with other parents, or to discuss issues with co-workers? Then you need a service you can trust, especially now Whatsapp, Instagram and Facebook are to be integrated into the same core infrastructure. Your best bet is Signal a secure Open Source project with no creepy tracking. The encryption tool designed by Signal is so good it is now also used by Whatsapp and Telegram. The founder of WhatsApp, Brian Acton is now backing Signal. 

If all readers of Barcelona Metropolitan join Signal, we can make this change happen today! 

2. Change Your Web Browser Today

Find out how you can get 2000+ trackers off your tail: if you are a Chrome user, it’s time to switch to a privacy-first browser like Firefox for your desktop and FirefoxFocus for your mobile devices. Developed by the Mozilla Foundation that has pledged to build a healthy Internet. There is a free password manager, you can securely send files with FirefoxSend and have all your email addresses monitored to check if you have been part of a data breach. Alternatively, try Cake a next-generation browser with a VPN.

3. Change Your Search Engine

Do you still “Google” stuff? Inside your browser, change your homepage to Startpage “the world’s most private search engine.” A really smart idea. You search on Startpage and the service removes all trackers and logs so your search terms cannot be linked to you. Also try DuckDuckGo for fully-fledged privacy or Qwant which is based in Europe and follows more strict privacy guidelines. Unlike Startpage which anonymizes Google’s results, both DuckDuck and Qwant have their own search algorithms.

4. Use a VPN Service

You just need to connect securely in public. Properly. Like checking your bank account online or sending files. For this, you need a Virtual Private Network (VPN) the best ones are from NordVPN or ProtonVPN which was created at CERN, where the web was born and comes with the advantage of an anonymous Protonmail email account for secure communication. 

5. Change Your Credit Card Habits

That little plastic rectangle in your wallet is the opposite of discrete: it is a traitor, plain and simple. Not only does it report all details of your purchase activity to your bank, it also lets other companies in on the deal too. Who even allowed that? And at some point, those clunky 16-digits and expiry date will be cloned and you will be hacked. It is a mature technology that was clearly not designed for the digital era. In Europe there are some exciting new initiatives in digital payments being built on the EU Payment Services Directive II, but until these are announced, get yourself a virtual card number from Spendesk. 

So, perhaps you have nothing to hide, nothing to be embarrassed about. In the physical world, if you have a lock on your front door and you wear clothes, now you can use these five keys to do the same in the digital world. Why wouldn’t you protect yourself in the same way? 

It’s not about having something to hide. It’s about having something to protect.—Edward Snowden