Staying Safe online and on Wattpad

Popularity or privacy? Part Three: can we have both?

Let's recap.

I've talked about how websites and data collectors can intercept our information and build detailed profiles of our lives, which they trade for money or give to the security services in case we might commit a crime one day. I've covered privacy policies that are designed to protect us but that we rarely read or challenge, and I've posted links showing how we can limit prying with anti tracking software like Ghostery or U-block plus ways of getting off the suckers list drawn up by fraudsters, criminal gangs and hackers. I'll discuss other protection tools later, but I haven't mentioned how we juggle the balance between striving to be popular and maintaining our privacy. It is very difficult without defining what we want kept private and what we want to promote.

So what is privacy?

It's worth thinking about what the law considers as privacy. There are many versions. What one country's law thinks is private another considers fair game. I've said that Europe has the strictest take on privacy while other countries like the USA are a little 'looser' shall we say. As early as 1990, 87% of the population of the United States could be uniquely identified by gender, ZIP code, and full date of birth, so that illustrates how deeply collectors and advertisers have compromised the personal information of that nation's citizens. The definition of Personally Identifiable Information (PII) varies from country to country but most people would accept the basic list of private things distinguishing individual identity below:

• Full name (if not common)

• Home address

• Email address (if private from an association/club membership, etc.)

• National identification number (Some countries like the UK don't have ID cards)

• Social security number (In UK National Insurance Number)

• Passport number

• IP address (in some cases)

• Vehicle registration plate number

• Driver's license number

• Face (picture ID)

• Fingerprints

• Handwriting

• Credit or Debit card numbers

• Digital identity (digital identifiers include online log-in profiles we have with websites we use like WP. We can have more than one.)

• Date of birth

• Birthplace

• Genetic information (DNA profile)

• Telephone number

• Login name, screen name, nickname, or handle (I recommend you have more than one)

Each of the above can identify us as unique spirits in the internet world if a website or a collector manages to put them together in one place. Few websites we visit have every part of that info, but we have to accept that if we have inputted most of the above on the internet at some point, someone has recorded it in a separate (and hopefully secure) place.

The following list doesn't always identify individuals unless they're combined with other personal information.

• First or last name, if common