When I discovered Bitcoin and blockchain.info several years ago I said to myself that public blockchain is even worse than any surveillance, surveillance at least requires a court order. After this conclusion, every payment or tip in crypto space from known and unknown people went through a temptation to wash everything just in case.
It's not about paranoia, it's about how lack of fungibility hurts. You remember recent theft from BitFinex? Thousands of eyes now looking for those addresses where stolen money locked. Yes, locked and will require a titanic work to make them spendable. Now imagine that guy will send some dust to a thousands of people addresses on exchanges and that "joke" can result in a wide ban of innocent people around the world on exchanges with AML/KYC policy enforced and full blown witch-hunt. This is rough and just out of ass example of how traceability can hurt.
Something Real?
You paid for a service using BitPay? Congratulations, BitPay and Coinbase are known to have used chain analysis to spy on people. You are innocent Coinbase user and you made a jar for you and your LocalBitcoins friends for a drinkup on next weekend? Now you are in a trouble. Reddit is full of real stories.
It's All About Fear to Accept or Spend Money
When such fear takes place system is broken. It's all about how innocent people might suffer. Crooks, scammers and thieves are not affected because they are smart enough to avoid fungibility problems.
Monero is Here to Protect You
Monero is an out of the box solution for your financial privacy. Consider XMR coins are all tainted or clean. It does not matter because no one will ever know who, when, how much and to where.
Monero coins are always fresh like newly printed banknotes from Treasury Department but without serial numbers. By its nature. Guaranteed by protocol.
Even if you bought Monero on a KYC/AML enforced exchange, once coins were withdrawn all traces are lost. Because each XMR transaction is like a faster than light jump of your money to an unknown place in a deep space called The Internet of Cash. Monero community and developers decided to completely ban non-anonymous payments.
Need more reading and math? Thanks to 
Understanding Monero Cryptography Part #1
Understanding Monero Cryptography Part #2
Or like me you are not a scholar enough for close to the metal reading? Check out On Fungibility, Bitcoin, Monero and why ZCash is a bad idea.
Treasure your privacy, guys. Stay with Monero.