Why you should care about privacy protection

You have plenty to hide – (and yes, even if you’re not into any criminal activities!)

Personal data trading has become a huge business in recent years. There are a lot of companies that collect data and sell it. The most famous ones are of course Google and Facebook, but there are many more. As soon as an app or some service on a website is free and not open source you have to assume that they’re collecting your data to finance their product. You might be wondering why you should care. You might think that you don’t have anything to hide. Well — it is probably true that you’re not into any criminal activities. But remember that knowledge is power. If somebody knows how you behave they can take advantage of this and sell you things you don’t really want. If you still think you have nothing to hide, than why are you wearing clothes? Why do you put a letter into an envelope? Why don’t you tell your neighbor and everybody else all about your feelings? You do have plenty of secrets. They might not be obvious at first, but they’re there and they need to be protected.

If you’re still thinking “I’ve got nothing to hide (and never will)”, then think of the following:

Let’s assume that Google knows from your searches that you have a rare disease. Google could sell this valuable information to an insurance company. The insurance company might deny selling you insurance. So in an unregulated market this could lead to you not having insurance at all. A potential employer might employ someone else, because they don’t want to take the risk that you will stay home, sick all the time.

Ultimately if they know your habits and know how you behave, they can predict what you will do, buy, and much more. So in the end they could be controlling you, without you ever noticing. We from SnowHaze believe, that it’s much easier to protect your privacy now than to change your habits in the future.

While it’s bad when companies know you better than you do, it’s even worse when they think they know things about you, that are not actually true. This could again apply to a disease they think you have, which you don’t have. They could think you’re a terrorist and you (or your family) could lose your jobs. There are an infinite number of possible examples and the worst thing is you wouldn’t even know what happened. Data that companies store about you and the conclusions they make are absolutely unknown to you. If they make mistakes – and they will – you could end up in huge trouble without ever knowing why.

The most important thing to know is that the companies will never stop of their own accord. Until now personalized products have generally been beneficial to the consumer. But in the future we will also feel the downside of them knowing everything about us. We can’t expect any help from politics because their decisions are far too slow. This leaves us only one option: We have to do it ourselves.