"I Have Nothing to Hide"

People close their curtains even when they are doing nothing wrong. Privacy is not about guilt. It is about having a boundary between your life and everyone else’s.

The other problem with “nothing to hide” is that it misunderstands what your data is actually worth. You are not the target. Your data is a raw material. It gets collected, combined with data from other sources, and assembled into a profile that is far more detailed than any single piece of information would suggest. That profile gets sold. And the person who buys it knows enough about you to become you.

Identity theft does not require you to have done anything interesting. It just requires someone to have paid attention.