Mr. Andrew Mills

The biggest threat to your privacy is not the NSA or Microsoft. It’s not Facebook or the police.  Or some seventeen year old kid in the Ukraine writing malware.

The biggest threat to your privacy is you.

I say this because most people I observe take their privacy for granted.  They do little to protect their privacy; some people even actively compromise, undermine and destroy their own privacy.

Let me give an example.

If you own a smartphone, I want you to stop and remember the last time you installed an app.  Did you stop and read through all of the permissions that app required? 

Or did you just click on the “Accept” button because you were in a hurry?

Every time you blindly “Accept” something without question– whether it may be a smartphone app or an politician’s explanation of why such-and-such agency needs to be able to collect terabytes of intercepted communications about its citizenry– you run the risk of jeopardizing your own privacy.

If you care about your privacy, it is your responsibility to protect it.  Part of that responsibility is staying informed of what you are being asked to exchange when you install an app on your phone, or put a specific individual in a political office.