Digital Privacy is a Game of Probability, Not Perfection
Digital Privacy is a Game of Probability, Not Perfection
Compromise and tradeoffs can't be avoided and that's okay (free post)
Enhancing your personal privacy isn’t about perfection. It’s about probability. It’s why one of our taglines is helping you to become a harder target. A reasonable amount of effort and investment can significantly reduce your risk form hacks, leaks and AI scams.
On the other hand, there are numerous privacy enthusiasts trying to sell you on on the opposite. That you can become digitally invisible and you don’t have to compromise. Some of their solutions are great in theory, but not practical. Others are dangerous and could backfire. We wager if there was a way to do an independent audit of their personal privacy stacks, you’d find a lot of smoke and mirrors. For the simple reason that perfect privacy is not possible except in extreme edge cases.
Here are a few examples of questionable, no-compromise type advice:
Whole house VPN. Now if you live alone or every member of your family is an IT wiz, this may work. But if just one of your family members struggles with tech, this is a guaranteed headache given how many websites and services are blocking VPNs. It’s not really practical.
Pay for Everything with Cash, Monero or Gift Cards. Great in theory, highly impractical, and possibly illegal in some cases. We wrote about specific use cases for paying with cash or crypto (link below), so we support targeted use of this strategy. But a no compromises strategy is impossible and may even land you in legal trouble.
Living off the Digital Grid. The idea of living off the grid has romantic appeal, but it’s not practical for all but a handful. It requires significant resources, knowledge, and a complete lifestyle change. Moreover, it doesn’t fully eliminate your digital footprint—you’ll still need to interact with the outside world at some point, and those interactions can compromise your privacy.
Setting up Anonymous Offshore Bank Accounts. You don’t want to try setting up offshore bank accounts. Take it from someone who has actually done this for clients (legally, of course). It’s resource intensive with very little practical privacy benefit. You’ll spend hours and lots of money, only to discover it won’t hide you from the government and regulators. You may even trip over some legal landmines. And it does nothing to hide you from hacks, leaks or AI scammers. This is Hollywood type privacy advice you get from watching a movie.
A More Practical Strategy
Think of your privacy as a fortress. No fortress is entirely impregnable, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth building defenses. The goal is to make yourself a harder target, to make the cost of breaching your privacy so high (or annoying) that most attackers will simply move on to an easier target.
This approach is about managing risks and understanding that while complete privacy may be impossible, significantly improving your privacy is both achievable and worthwhile. It’s about making informed decisions and adopting practices that strike a balance between security and practicality.
Not needing to be perfect is actually liberating. Because striving for perfection is exhausting, distracting and not practical unless you’re making a living doing it. Good enough creates enough friction for you to escape relatively unharmed from hacks, leaks and AI scams.
AI scams are here and getting more sophisticated. One of the best things you can do to protect yourself is to remove your personal information from Google and the data broker sites. That starves the scammers of vital information, making you a much harder target. You can DIY, or pay a reasonable fee to DeleteMe to do it for you. Sign up today and get 20% off using our affiliate link here. We’ve used DeleteMe for almost five years and appreciate the peace of mind.
Adopt a Practical Approach to Privacy
Tradeoffs are inevitable. Whether in privacy or life. We all have our limits on how much effort or money we’ll invest in making ourselves a harder target. Some aren’t willing to use VPNs, some don’t want to give up a certain app. No judgment here. The relevant part is to take meaningful action to get the most ROI on your investment.
Rather than aiming for perfection, focus on strategies that significantly reduce your exposure without drastically impacting your life. You can DIY, but there’s a lot of bad advice out there as noted above. Our newsletter and social media posts, on the other hand, provide practical, insider and verified tactics. If something is overly complicated or borderline impractically, we note that, and don’t pretend we do it.
In short, your goal should be to make yourself a less attractive target, not to achieve an unattainable level of perfection. Privacy is a journey, not a destination, and by focusing on probability rather than perfection, you can effectively protect yourself in a risky digital landscape.
Thank you for your continued support and trust in us. 🙏
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Disclaimer: None of the above is to be deemed legal advice of any kind. These are *opinions* written by a privacy attorney with 15+ years of working for, with and against Big Tech and Big Data. And this post is for informational purposes only and is not intended for use in furtherance of any unlawful activity.
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