Spoken like someone that's never had a partner with impulse control or anger issues. Keeping PII private is, IMO, like freedom of speech or privacy: it may seem trivial and unimportant when you don't need it, but it sure as hell matters to some people, and can keep them safe.
It matters to me a great deal, but I've just come to face the fact that much of what I and the various organizations who collect PII from me consider private is effectively publicly accessible, no matter what lip service to privacy these organizations give.
Our SSN's, names, ages, address, phone numbers, emails, locations, habits, interests, political opinions and affiliations, sexual orientations, medical histories and countless other "private" and identifying information are in countless databases and available to those willing and able to pay for, spy on, or steal them
I think there are some steps which can be taken to help mitigate this:
- use a VPN to obscure rough IP based location lookups and if the VPN has shared traffic it also make tracking more difficult
- limit apps which are useful with geolocation to use rough geolocation
- If on ios, opting out of app tracking will at least disable Apple’s advertising ID.
- Be mindful of granting bluetooth and network access.
For apps which require precise geolocation this becomes a problem (ex: google maps for navigation).
If you can, find an alternative with better privacy incentives (ex: apple maps).
For the stronger privacy willed when signing up for a service think about what information is identifying and whether or not it is worth withholding:
- use unique email addresses (ideally with a unique domain or a shared domain; ex: simplelogin)
- use a credit card with a unique number which can make payments under a unique name (ex: privacy.com)
- use a unique name
- phone numbers are a bit more tricky (ex: talkatone)
None of these things are perfect, introduce their own risks, and may trigger fraud alerts but I think they help in some of the situations listed above.
I admit this certainly isn’t realistic to expect of most people.
If you or anyone else have thoughts on this or know of other services, I’m all ears.
