Privacy 101: Get Your Digital Life in Order
You may listen to the podcast version of this essay here.
Dear privacy seekers,
Privacy is a mindset. It’s also a process and, yes, a list of services and products to use—which are always shifting. But what doesn’t shift is the mindset. And, as such, it requires reflection and practice. Without cultivating the mindset you won’t get far. You’ve probably heard about lottery winners and professional athletes who as the years go by end up bankrupt and impoverished because they never knew how to handle money in the first place. It’s the same with privacy. If you don’t establish the habits of restricting your information online and in person—if you don’t stop to think about the systems around you waiting to gobble up your data—then you’ll lose your privacy eventually. Privacy is a mindset.
Let’s think about a privacy mindset in terms of minimalism. The best way to be private is to keep as much information inside your head as possible and to expose as little of it to the world as possible. This is especially crucial today when the whole world is sucking up your data for one reason or another. You can’t expect to have privacy if you give away your information promiscuously. The more accounts you have, the more photos you have online, the more services you use—the less your privacy will be. Minimalism can help us out. Minimalism says that most of the things you have in your life are probably unnecessary. That’s right. Most of the things in your life should not be there. Not only are they taking up space, but they might be harming you.
In fact, mathematical principles can back this up. The Pareto Principle states that 80% of results come from 20% of causes. If you run a shop then 20% of your items will give you 80% of your profit. And a mere 20% percent of your plants will yield 80% of your vegetables. This means, for our purposes, that only one-fifth of your accounts, your possessions, and your hobbies are worth your time. Much of the rest can probably be jettisoned.
Today we live in a world where we’re encouraged to put ourselves out there: to spend, and collect, and accumulate and take up space. You go to the store to buy a laptop—you don’t need a new laptop—and when you buy it they want your name, your email, your phone number. You give them your credit card information as well. And you don’t realize that that card swipe alone gave thousands of other people knowledge about this shopping trip. Back at home with your new laptop you start to visit your old websites and they want you to create an account and surrender some personal details. So you do all of that in a daze of compliance.
Other times we give things up without anyone asking for them. We funnel our life story into Facebook or Twitter. We create an account to perform a simple action that we could have done without. We set up a fancy rewards credit cards connected to a store account when cash will do just fine. We fill out every line on a doctor’s form when it’s not necessary. Simply because it was put in front of us.
We also pursue maximalism for its own sake. We buy the latest electric-powered car that transmits everything about its functioning back to headquarters. We put “smart” appliances in our house to record our habits and (supposedly) fine-tune our lives. We observe our finances abstractly via complex phone apps which require a half dozen permissions and multiple third-party processors just to establish a connection with our multiple banks and credit cards.
In short, we’ve made the world unnecessarily complex. Even worse, we have come to assume that complexity is synonymous with new is synonymous with good. There is nothing inherently good about more. Nothing inherently good about new. Nothing inherently good about progress. And these false notions have eroded our humanity and our privacy.
Privacy demands that you give out as little as possible. When you give data to someone, or input it into a text box on the Internet, you foolishly trust it to a third-party. A third-party will let you down. When you give your DNA to a heritage company they’ll hold onto it and sell it. Who knows, maybe you’ll even end up seeing your clone one day. You signed for it in the fine print. Don’t you remember that?
These companies will lose your data as well. Just look at the hundreds of data breaches and leaks that have happened. Remember the old maxim, “You can trust two people with a secret if one of them is dead”? The minute your personal details pass yours lips or your keyboard, you’ve lost any claim to them and any privacy.
So, what would a minimalist do?
A minimalism would make do with five online accounts instead of fifty. He would note his business expenses on an offline spreadsheet instead of signing up for bank-connecting software. Indeed, he would avoid as many third-party services as possible. He would learn woodworking during boring evenings instead of getting a Hulu account just to watch one more vapid show. He would find entertainment in the fruits of life instead of having a constant stream of Amazon goodies flowing to his front porch. He would meet his three good friends for coffee regularly instead of interacting with his 300 “friends” on the spy software known as Facebook. He would run a few kilometers like every other runner throughout history without attaching a tracking device to his arm because—well, that’s what other people do. He would view the world with his own eyes instead of hiding from it behind a lens.
Minimalism helps us to get at privacy. It helps to cut off the fat slowing us down from being more authentic, productive, and sincere. Minimalism frees us from our over-encumbered world.
Now for our Praxis: Getting Your Digital Life in Order
Before privacy, you must get your life in order. This involves taking stock and getting rid of the chaff. Start with your physical belongings. It’s wise to have as few of these as possible. Physical possessions can be stolen, can reveal you, and can prevent you for staying on your feet and moving to seek more free and private locales. I recommend selling at least half of your stuff. Why not 80%? Use Craigslist and use yard sales apps with fake information. Drop off at charities. Sell to friends and family.
As you go along find opportunities to turn physical objects into digital images. You don’t need your paper diploma, or mortgage statements, or bills, tax documents, receipts, health papers, old Christmas cards, and all the rest. If someone broke into your house these would help them commit identity theft against you. Do yourself a favor. Buy a portable scanner. The Epson ES-50 is a good option. Scan these papers and put them on your computer. Onto your actual computer and not onto a cloud service. And preferably they will be hidden behind an encrypted folder. We’ll talk about that in a minute.
Now we’re in front of your computer. Look at your desktop. Is it full of icons and files and clutter? Let’s clean it up. Start by making sure all of the files in your life are there in front of you on your desktop. Take stock and consider anything you have on an external hard drive, or on another computer, or a USB drive. Gather it all and transfer it to your main computer so you have it in one place.
Now, start making folders. Folders are amazing. Create folders inside of folders. Start sifting and labeling and organizing. As you sort you’ll start finding things you don’t need. Delete them. Large files especially must justify their existence. Often you can right click on a file and go to properties to see its size. You can also sort folders by size to see the big ones rise to the top. Large files will make it more difficult to back up everything and easily possess it. What you want is to be able to take all of your digital files with you by moving them to a USB drive in minutes. That’s freedom.
When I originally did this process I just described I reduced my digital clutter from 100 gigabytes to 3 gigabytes. One hundred to three. I found large video files hiding in corners of my computer, duplicates photo collections, and I even made hard calls to wipe data that I knew I never needed to see again. Instead of keeping 10,000 photos that you’ll never look at again, consider whittling down to 100 photos that you can look at for the first time and truly cherish. 10,000 photos is merely a statistic.
I’m staring right now at three folders on my desktop. One is for business. One is personal. The other is for a specific project I’m working on. Everything digital I own in the world is inside of them. Nothing is online. I back up this three gigabytes of data regularly and put it in a Veracrypt encrypted container. I then put this onto a key-chain USB as a backup. Everything digital that I have—much of the information I have at all—can fit between my thumb and forefinger.
My files on my computer are important and everything else on it is not. My online accounts exist in cyberspace and can be accessed anywhere. The programs on my computer can be reinstalled. All settings can be reconfigured. As a test of my minimalism I frequently reinstall my entire operating system. Yes, I reset it to factory settings at least twice per year.
When you have everything you need in three folders you can pick up and leave pretty easily. It’s kind of like having a backpack and a few prized possessions and being able to vanish any time you want. Think about this: are you the product of your thoughts and actions or the accumulations of your stuff?
I mentioned encryption so let’s cover that briefly. Those folders sitting on my desk are sitting ducks for thieves or hackers. They’re fairly safe on my physical computer, but I can do even better. And I want to be able to back them up elsewhere in case some disaster befalls my computer. That means I want them hiding behind an layer of encrypted protection.
I search for Veracrypt online and download it. I follow instructions—found in my book or via tutorials online—and eventually run the program and create an encrypted folder on my desktop. I can then open that folder and put anything I want in it. I’ll open it regularly to back up my stuff. At that point I’m staring at a single encrypted folder that I can copy to a USB drive and hide wherever I choose. You might just take it with you on your key-chain.
Now let’s go online. You absolutely must have a password manager to organize your online life. KeepassXC is my preferred manager. It is offline, which means it doesn’t touch the Internet and couldn’t be hacked unless someone actually compromised your computer and guessed the password. If I needed to sync passwords with other devices, I would think if ti was truly necessary—and then would consider BitWarden. Don’t rely on your browser to remember your passwords. Don’t trust it to a spreadsheet. Don’t write it down in a notebook. Get a password manager.
Now, just as you went out and consolidated your digital items onto your desktop, it’s now time to go online and put every account you own into your password manager. Start with the obvious stuff. Look at your notebook or your spreadsheet where you awkwardly stored passwords before. Take your time and weeks if you need to, but get everything into this manager. This will be stored in a KeepassXC file that can only be accessed with a valid password. Suffice it to say this is a precious file and you should back it up and treat it as your most valued digital possession.
Your manager can also store extra information. I put my credit cards numbers in the database under my credit card account. I note when I closed an account. I put my secret questions in there. I put alias information and whatever else I need. Everything pertaining to my online accounts is in KeepassXC, which I trust.
Consolidating all your online accounts can be laborious. As you go through them, be prepared to delete the ones you no longer need. You’ll sometimes have forgotten accounts and have to reset passwords. Keep plugging away slowly but steadily. There’s something therapeutic about getting rid of the accounts you don’t need and consolidating the survivors in one spot.
When you come across an account ask yourself if you’ve used it in the last six months. If not, you probably don’t need it. Every account you have out there is a vulnerability waiting to end up in a data breach. As with your digital files, be ruthless.
Did you think I’d forget your email inbox? I was once at dinner when I overheard someone ask the person next to me—having seen her phone on the table: “I don’t mean to pry, but do you really have fifteen thousand unread messages?”
Just as extra programs can invite malicious software, so too can a bloated inbox cost you dearly. Criminals send out messages asking you to click this link and download this and log in here. The fewer emails you have the more wholesome and manageable your email life will be. Start small. Aim to unsubscribe from five services each day. Promise yourself never to be so reckless with your email address again. Consider starting over with a new email. In the future make use of burner email addresses such as those on services such as 33mail and SimpleLogin. All of this will help you get back on track.
By the end of this exercise you will have minimized your physical and digital possessions. Don’t accumulate more. Appreciate the flexibility and freedom minimalism offers. Appreciate your new possibility for privacy.
Yours in peace and privacy,
Gabriel Custodiet