What is privacy?

A first important question we need to answer is: what is privacy? All to often privacy is confused with secrecy or hidding 'bad' activities.

You hear people say it all the time: 'I have nothing to hide' or 'if you obey the rules, you should not fear anything and you should not hide anything' or any other variant. At the base always lies the same idea that 'good' citizens should have nothing in their lives that they would want to hide.

But if you put on your thinking cap for just 5 seconds, you will see how absurd these statements and ideas are.

Everyone always has something to hide. Plain and simple.

If you go to the bathroom, you close the door. Whatever happens in your bedroom, happens with the curtains closed. How much money you have in your bank account, is not displayed on a billboard. The report of your last uncomfortable appointment to the doctor is (normally) not posted to your website. And this list continues endlessly.

Everyone can sure think of something about themselves they don't want the public to know.

So, we all have something to hide.

Privacy is about you choosing what you share with who.

Privacy gives you control to decide who gets what information about you.

What is a privacy mindset?

The next step to a more private life is to change your thoughts and actions and to be more critical towards everyone and everything asking information about you.

A question that should pop up almost automatically when someone asks you for (some of) your personal information is "what necessitates giving up this information?". This first question can be followed by "is the requested information the absolute minimum needed for the service offered?".

When you notice that the requested personal information is exaggerated, you can start to look for ways to divulge less personal information.

Ask why all this information is needed. Ask if you can choose not to provide certain information and how that will influence the service they are offering.

When filling out an online form always click the 'send' or 'confirm' button first to see which fields are mandatory. See if you can provide shortened, incomplete of incorrect information.

It all depends on the service you would like to receive and if it would still be possible when you provide less (of none at all) personal identifiable information.

An email address does not need to be your main email address. The same goes for your phone number.

Is it really necessary to give out your official name or will an alias do?

Your exact date of birth is probably not very important and changing a few years probably won't hurt.

An invoicing address does not need to be your home address, you might as well have ordered that item 5 blocks (or a whole city) away from a hotel room.

You get the point: always try to provide as less personal information as possible to still receive what you want.

I am in no way advocating for giving false information to official instances!

But a webshop, a new app or the mailing list of your favorite blogger all don't really need your 100% accurate personal information.

Why go through all the trouble?

That is an important question to ask, because it does take (a lot) more effort to make up some new information every time or to be caution every time you are asked for personal information.

But as I wrote in the beginning: privacy is about you choosing what you share with who.

'Share' might not be the right word here, since it is actually 'giving up'. The moment you give your information to someone else, you are out of control. You don't control how that information is processed, stored, leaked or solded.

You can only rely on trust. Trust in the other party to handle your information with care.

That's it. Nothing more.

And, as countless hacks and leaks have taught us, that trust isn't worth as much as we would like it to be.

(Just to be clear: I'm not saying you shouldn't trust the person collecting your information to be well intentioned. It is about the trusting that your information will always be well guarded and well hanled. The latter is dangerous and naive.)

And that is why we should go through all the trouble of providing as less personal information as possible. For the day the next database leaks and your information gets out for everyone to see. Because by then, it's too late and the only one responsible is you. You have willingly given up all that information.

Your privacy is my privacy

This brings us to the last point I would like to make: your privacy is my privacy. Alone we will not be able to stop the urge of organizations to collect as much information as possible. But when enough people refuse to give up their personal information, we could make a difference.

If you don't hand over your information to one party and I don't hand over mine to another, they are both confronted with people that don't like to unnecessarily give out their data. The more people do this, the more organizations will have incomplete or incorrect data. Leaked data will be less reliable and less usable.

And who knows, maybe those organizations will look more closely and more critically at what they are actually asking of their customers and users.