I have nothing to hide, have not I? Privacy breach implications

I am sure that many of you heard, or maybe thought about themselves, that privacy is a good thing, but that is not about me. I have nothing to hide. I won’t bore myself choosing secure passwords, updating telephone or behaving securely.

There is no need to say that this is a parochial view. But still, it seems that such behavioural pattern is strong enough in our society.

Privacy breach may come from different sources. Most common examples are:

• Poor credentials management. It is when you write down your password on paper or in notes, use the same password for bank-client and un-known web-store, tell your password to others and so on.

• Untimely device update. By not updating, you start accumulating vulnerabilities in your device. Vulnerabilities discovery is a continuous process. Patches development by vendors is also continuing. But when you stop updating, or vendor stops support - your device slowly and surely starts turning into a sieve. You just test your luck by doing this and waiting for a severe exploit to be developed.

• Absence of hardware or software assets inventory. You can not protect what you do not know you have.

• Phishing. It is a fraudulent attempt to obtain sensitive information. Simply put, it’s when you’ve been cheated.

• Developers mistakes. It is impossible to count how many mistakes a developer can do developing software. Modern software is an extremely complex, multi-layered pie of libraries and custom-written code.

• Stupidness. Oh, I do not know the exact proportion of what goes first, but I bet this one won’t be the last:)

A very superficial way of looking at privacy is to say that I have nothing to hide. In the most convincing form, the argument boils down to the fact that the need for privacy is generally minimal and trivial and the likelihood of data disclosure is so low, that the balance is not in favour of security.

Obviously, if someone says that s/he has nothing to hide, we can brake this conjecture by extrapolating nothing to extreme cases. Can you show me your bank account? Can you give me a password from your email? Can you see your medical entries? And so on. The proposition quickly becomes unsustainable. But is it so simple?

Most likely people usually do not bother themselves accurately formulating the definition of privacy and mean something else, something more specific. Ler’s go further and try to guess missing details and analyse them.

• One can say that privacy is about hiding private information.

• Another can treat privacy as an offspring of security, assessing a security burden in some particular case (for example, security vs flexibility).

• Others would treat privacy as hiding bad information.

The problem with the “nothing to hide” argument lies in the very assumption of what is privacy. Definitely, it is not only about hiding bad things. Broadly speaking, privacy is the right to be let alone, or freedom from interference or intrusion. Information privacy is the right to have some control over how your personal information is collected and used. This is a fundamental building block affecting inter-social relationships, the relationship between society and government, security vs freedom balance and government remit in that. Usually, debates about nothing to hide are caused by not agreeing on what’s in dispute. The right to privacy is an essential pillar in today’s civilisation.

Let’s make one step high-level and comprehensive definitions to practical implications. What does it practically mean?

1. Information in the wrong hands becomes dangerous. Once you do not care about protecting your information, it is just a matter of time when would you encounter adversary.

2. Your private life out of context becomes a weapon. Behaviour changes depending on the people we’re with. What you can say to your friends may sound offensive in the office.

3. Your information has value. Social networks allow uploading unlimited data to their services. Where did that take money from to support all that infrastructure? Obviously, advertising. It is so successful because they sell users data advertisers. Or you may also come to an understanding of the value thinking about that. Would you share answers to 100 intimate questions with the third party?

If you lead a normal life, unfortunately, your privacy depends not only on you. To reduce the likelihood of breaching your privacy, follow common security hygiene practices:

• Use only applications from trusted sources

• Install the latest updates

• Cleverly manage your credentials and

• Be sceptical about what you see and receive.