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We all want to recover (and maintain) our online privacy.
But online privacy is a myth—and offline privacy might be one, too.
The myth of online privacy is like that: Privacy feels foundational in our society.
Wit Olszewski/Shutterstock.com
Breaking the Privacy Illusion
We may all agree that online privacy isn’t something we have.
But do you realize how little privacy you actually have?
In the USA, they can evensell your browsing data.
Your mobile carrier may even betracking and selling your app usage activity.
But it likely loads a lot of tracking scripts, too.
Those tracker networks can track your activity across multiple websites.
Even if you’reclearing cookies, there are a lot of ways tofingerprint your web surfing app.
“The cloud” is just someone else’s computer.
The same goes formessages and emails, which generally aren’t encrypted either.
Yourcredit card usage is being used to track you, too.
The online world isn’t something completely separate from the real, physical world, of course.
What Can You Even Do?
An article like this one could go on and on with examples.
Do a little digging, and you’re able to find many more examples.
There are no perfect fixes.
you’ve got the option to avoid using Facebook, butFacebook has a shadow profile on youanyway.
So what can you do?
Well, it’s possible for you to still make a dent in it.
You coulduse Tor—though there have been vulnerabilities in Tor, too.
What’s the Point?
No, we don’t mean give up—we mean consider what you’re actually defending against.
Related:What Is Signal, and Why Is Everyone Using It?
It’s all about your threat model—what are you actually trying to defend against?
Unfortunately, that’s not a recipe for “online privacy.”
There’s no easy way to flip a privacy switch and regain a mythical state of privacy.
