Hacking the Hacker

43Privacy

Many people, including the author of this book, believe that personal privacy, especially in digital age, should be a guaranteed, innate right of all human beings. Unfortunately, much of our digital and financial privacy is long gone. Internet search engines, online advertisers, and software vendors often know more about you than anyone besides yourself. A few years ago, an enraged parent visited Target because the store’s marketing department was sending unsolicited ads for baby supplies to his teenage daughter. He eventually had to apologize when he learned Target knew more about his daughter than he did (http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how‐target‐figured‐out‐a‐teen‐girl‐was‐pregnant‐before‐her‐father‐did/#d84bcce34c62).

In most countries, and certainly on the Internet, your privacy is gone. Nothing you do is truly private. Even ultra‐privacy–promoting apps like Tor and the “darknet,” which claim they give you the best privacy possible, don’t really work all that well for real‐world applications. Don’t believe me? Ask all the arrested criminals who thought Tor or their anonymity service was providing absolute anonymity. There are lots of ways to increase privacy, but as long as tracking you and your activities is legal, companies (and law enforcement) are going to do it.

This is not to say that some governments and companies aren’t trying to give you some reasonable level of online privacy. For example, the recently enacted European Union’s General ...