Being anonymous is a way of thinking, a style of life.
We cannot all be Grade A Hackers with the technical skills to go through our daily life leaving little, if any, trace.
So what can you do? What can you start to do differently that can put you on the track to regain your privacy?
Picture credit: buy it at cryptoart
What is Privacy
Let see what our friend wikipedia has to say:
Privacy is the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves, or information about themselves, and thereby express themselves selectively. The boundaries and content of what is considered private differ among cultures and individuals, but share common themes. When something is private to a person, it usually means that something is inherently special or sensitive to them.
The keys are informations and selection.
Informations
What is it that you want to conceal ? Or let me rephrase: what is it that you don't want to go public. It doesn't necessarily mean the same. Please don't say nothing. This is either utterly stupid, or naive, or both. We know, specially nowadays that information is power, information is money. Look at the trend of data mining and all those free products where YOU are the product. Take a moment to think about it we have or are going to have:
- smart phones
- smart watches
- smart cities
- smart cars
- smart fridges
- smart TVs
- smart houses
and list is only getting longer. What guarantees will you have on your data?
Selection
Which informations do I want known by which service provider? The answer is not so easy to find but at least it is not "all or nothing".
A simple example: Pokemon Go had a full access on your Google account in the earlier versions. I mean Pikachu doesn't need to read my emails, does he?
How do we proceed?
My proposition is a start, a basic low-level approach. We can loosely enumerate humans need as:
- Food
- Transportation
- Cash for Hobbies
Note: I didn't put communications as I couldn't find the same approach for it. If you have some hacks I am open to suggestions.
Food
What to say about food? Of course if you could grow all the food you need it would be awesome, or not. Here you can compare supermarkets and local markets. Supermarkets have customer card and other more developed service. They want to know you i.e have data on you. The more they know about you, the better they can sell to you. While your local markets only want to recognize you. They might spread some rumours on you but that might be it I guess.
Transportation
You could travel the whole world hitch-hiking, bicycling or running but hey this isn't some adventure article. So instead you could use trains and not planes, depending where you are going. In Europe this isn't a bad choice. You could use taxis instead of Uber, but Uber is so practical that it can be hard for some people. I don't have cheap taxis either. You usually can take some transportations without a membership plan. My bus company definitely knows when I am at work and when I am not.
Cash
Pay in cash. Except if you can use bitcoin, ether, steem or better monero, dash, zcash. But avoid your bank card. You won't have surprises the day you need a loan. The bank doesn't need to know what you actually spend your money on. This is a very small and easy habit. Withdraw small amounts for small expenses.
Conclusion
There are a lot of things you can do with the right mindset. Start with what you have and get the skills if you need more. Remember this is just a start.
cryptohazard