How many online accounts do you have? I couldn’t count mine. There are proably fifty sites that I visit regularly. From my bank to transfer money to Facebook to see cat videos.
Digitisation progresses. More and more agencies, businesses and non-profits make their services available online, and ask you to create an account. Another username, another password, and another set of obligatory fields to fill out.
I am increasingly worried about my (online) privacy. All that data spread out over different sites. All those CRM packages that track my behaviour (after I visit a site, I get an ad on Facebook for that same service?). And all those sites that have been hacked – 9,544,527,795 accounts have been compromised today, with emails, passwords and more available on the (dark) web.
Do I have a choice NOT to use these sites? Often I do not. Do I have a choice to discuss their privacy policy or security measures? Nope. Am I sure that my data is safe with them, and not being traded, enriched and analysed? Haha.
Is there no other way than to allow this digitisation to progress, and trust in the government watchdog(s)? Or can we create our own little data-vaults, and share only what we think is necessary for others to do their work? I hope for some blockchain form of the latter, but am afraid it will be more of the first..
