3 Reasons Why Everyone Has "Something To Hide"

Most people don't give a lot of thought to protecting their privacy. Since most of us aren't breaking any laws or doing anything unethical we assume we have "nothing to hide."

But there are several holes in this argument. For one, laws change all the time and what's legal today may not be in the future. In some places, there's no protection against applying new laws retroactively.

For another, the "nothing to hide" fallacy is objectively false. We all have something to hide. If you truly believe you have nothing to hide, you can feel free to leave your login credentials for your bank in the comments.

When each of us takes our privacy seriously, there are benefits to everyone. Even if you have "nothing to hide," many others do and your privacy can benefit them (and yourself in the long run).

Here's how.

1. Privacy Is Like a Vaccine

Not everyone can get vaccinated for various reasons - severe allergies or certain immune system conditions, for example. But when enough people get vaccinated, it creates herd immunity, which benefits the people who can't get vaccinated:

Herd immunity is when enough people in an area have immunity to a disease that it no longer spreads easily. It usually takes a large number of people getting vaccinated against or infected with the germ to achieve herd immunity.

Let's take encrypted email as an example in the privacy space.

There are those in the privacy community who criticize the use of encrypted email providers. They point out that because most people don't use encrypted email, most conversations you'll have over email are probably not secure on at least one side of the conversation.

While this may be an imperfect solution, I argue that encrypted email is still worth using because it reduces risk. If you use Gmail to send an email to my encrypted inbox, that message remains exposed in your Sent folder but it's completely safe on my side. That's still one less insider threat, one less data breach, and one less court order. If we were both using regular, unencrypted providers, those risks would be twofold.

Like vaccines, some people can't do privacy-protecting things for various reasons. For example, businesses rarely use encrypted email, especially when contacting external parties like customers or clients. When I'm the recipient, however, I can choose to use an encrypted email provider to receive those emails instead of throwing my hands up in defeat. And just like that, the "attack surface" has been cut in half.

Imagine this scenario at scale: if more people used encrypted email then the people not using it would still benefit. Their emails would be more likely to end up in encrypted inboxes, and web traffic would be increasingly likely to be encrypted as more people adopt encryption in a positive feedback loop.

This applies to nearly any privacy tool: messaging, cloud storage, and pretty much anything that reduces data collection or exposure.

2. Privacy Can Be Normalized

When privacy tools become everyday habits, several things happen:

• It stops being weird. In the past, it was absolutely unthinkable to use your real name online. When Facebook came along, a new norm was established and now it's unusual for people not to use their real names. Likewise, if we normalize privacy, it stops being met with suspicion or confusion and instead becomes just another normal part of life.
• It stops being magic. Right now, a lot of people treat tech of any kind as some sort of wizardry. They're hesitant to try new things out of fear of messing something up. If privacy-preserving technology (such as encryption) becomes common, people will stop being scared of it. In many cases, they probably won't even realize they're using it. Consider how many people are using iMessage every day without knowing that they're using encrypted messaging each time.
• People start expecting it. If we normalize privacy, people will start to expect it. This is already starting to happen. According to one source, 28% of online shoppers have stopped a transaction because they felt the company was asking for too much data, and 32% have avoided an app or program for the same reason. The trend of consumers wanting privacy is also being reflected in some of the current marketing like Apple's "Privacy. That's iPhone" ad campaign, or the numerous VPN providers promising anonymity on nearly every YouTube video or podcast out there.

When we normalize privacy, it will stop being odd, suspicious, or scary. Instead, not having privacy will become frowned upon and encourage people to seek out better alternatives, as well as companies to provide it.

3. Privacy Makes Surveillance Uneconomical

How much do you think your data is worth? Estimates vary but most sources say less than $1. This begs the question "how is this propping up a nearly-trillion-dollar industry?"

The answer is that data is valuable in aggregate. Surveilling one person doesn't yield a lot of information that can be turned into profit, but surveilling millions of people is a gold mine. All that data can be used to discover broad trends that might otherwise go unnoticed, and those trends can then be applied to improve targeted advertising, including knowing when to show those ads to someone at just the right moment to ensure they're most likely to click.

But what if we turned off that spigot and the data dried up? If everyone began to actively protect their privacy, it wouldn't make economic sense anymore to keep surveilling the handful of people who can't. The sample size wouldn't be large enough to see trends, and in time the targeting would become less accurate and thus the data less valuable.

And now we've come full circle back to herd immunity. Every person who starts protecting their privacy moves the needle - ever so slightly - toward the "more private" side of the spectrum for everyone. Avalanches and oceans are made one snowflake and drop of water at a time.

Getting Started

If you're starting to feel convinced and you want start taking your privacy more seriously - even if you have "nothing to hide" - here's a few things you can look into that require little or no effort:

• Removing unused apps is one of the most underrated yet easiest ways to get started in improving your privacy. Most people have apps on their phone that they used once or rarely (if ever) use. Next time have you even just have a few minutes - such as waiting for a meeting to start or "doomscrolling" - start going through the apps on your phone and delete the ones you don't need or use often. You can always redownload them later if you were wrong. (Also note that some apps can be used in your phone's browser instead of as a native app. This is better for privacy, especially combined with the next tip.)
• Change your browser. If you're still using Chrome or Safari (or another mainstream browser) I recommend switching to Brave or Firefox (or one of these browsers for mobile devices). Brave and Firefox offer far better privacy than most popular browsers. If you can't switch for any reason, add uBlock Origin in your current browser to start blocking ads and other trackers.
• Change your search engine. Most readers know that Google Search tracks users, but there's many high-quality alternatives who don't. If you insist that Google has the best results, some of the options I recommend proxy Google so that you can still get those results but more privately.
• Switch to encrypted email. Unlike real-time messengers, switching to encrypted email doesn't require action from others in order to start seeing some benefits. One easy way to make the transition is to set up an email forwarding rule and then reply from your new encrypted inbox. Over time people will notice the new address and update things on their end.
• Signing up for a data removal service is another low-hanging fruit that requires almost no effort after the initial setup. Some services start at as little as $20/year. A data removal services will help remove your information - including name, address, phone number, and more - from the internet, which will improve your privacy is a number of ways.

You don't have to be an activist, journalist, or CEO to care about privacy. Privacy is for everyone.

Right now, privacy is under more attack than ever. Despite that, it's never been easier to reclaim thanks to the proliferation of user-friendly tools like Signal, Proton, Brave, EasyOptOuts, and a growing number of others. In fact, because privacy is under attack, it's critical now more than ever that we normalize privacy and weaken the arguments of politicians that only criminals have "something to hide." (Unless they want to start posting their bank logins.)

Even if you don't have anything to hide, using these tools helps those who do by normalizing privacy, making surveillance harder, and raising the standard for everyone. With so many easy-to-use tools (most of them free), there's no reason not to try some out. You might be surprised by the other benefits they bring with them.