On December 15, 1890 a Harvard Law Review article was published with the title “The Right to Privacy”. This article was written by Samuel D. Warren II and Louis Brandeis, this paper was was written due to the increasing coverage of personnel lives being written by journalists in the year of 1890. The authors of The Right of Privacy wrote that the purpose of the article was to determine if the current laws in the 1800s could be used to protect one’s privacy as an individual. Let’s take a look at the definition of slander and Libel.

Libel is defined by law.cornell.edu as “a method of defamation expressed by print, writing, pictures, signs, effigies, or any communication embodied in physical form that is injurious to a person’s reputation; exposes a person to public hatred, contempt or ridicule; or injures a person in their business or profession.“

Slander is defined as “A false statement, usually made orally, which defames another person. Unlike libel, damages from slander are not presumed and must be proven by the party suing“

The law review written by Warren and Brandeis became the first paper in the United States that advocates for the right of privacy. The authors argued that libel and slander “only deals with damage reputation”. This law review about privacy paved the path for United States current laws regarding privacy and basic rights.

Privacy is a basic right that everyone should have no matter their race, sex, gender or country they are living in. In the 1940’s the United Nations General Assembly added the verbiage “No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with their privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honor and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.” to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) which is found in Article 12.

Privacy in Ancient Greece

Believe it or not, privacy was not invented during the current “Digital Era” that we are currently living in. In Ancient Greece. Aristotle the famous Greek philosopher, believed everyone has a oikos life and a polis life. Oikos is defined as “private family life”, polis was defined as public life, the things that you want public to know. During Aristotle’s life there was slaves, while in this age we do not have slaves. Aristotle defined Oikos as having three different relationships, one being the slave and a master. The other are the husband and the wife, and the relationship between the father and son. In Ancient Greece everyone went to the bathroom together in an area that had no doors, they sad on a hard rock with a hole in it and did their business. The poor shared a stick with sponge on it to wipe themselves. The stick with the sponge was put in a container that included vinegar to clean it. In Ancient Greece people expected different kinds of privacy while in Public or privately. For example you might share or joke about a topic with your friends but you would not make the same joke or topic with your parents or grandparents.

Every society values privacy differently, for example in North America bathroom stalls stop a few feet or inches from the floor but in many European countries the bathroom stall goes to the bottom of the floor.

In our current society one could argue that we have a private life, a public life and an online life. Some people have a large footprint on the internet. For example if you graduated college or made honors list in college, the college might have posted your name and information online. Your job might have a picture of you or a small bio on the company’s website. A lot of people post information on Social media like what they are doing, how they are feeling or post about their opinions. Sometimes malicious people will make a post that attempt to get users to share personal information that might seem harmless but could be used by hackers or companies to gather information about you for phishing or other scams. For example, a post might say “comment the date you first became a parent”. The birthday of your child might seem harmless but it could be used by hackers to try to guess a possible password. A hacker could also scrape all your posts on social media and find the most common word used and create a custom word list based on words you posted or by crawling your site. This could allow the hackers to guess your password. It is important to understand the risk of responding to those types of posts and think before you send or post.

First possible mention of Privacy.

Not to make this about in religion but in the bible of genesis, Adam and Eve are created and put in a garden. God tells them that they can eat from any tree except the tree of in the middle. At this time Adam and Eve were not ashamed that they were butt naked together. A serpent in the garden convinced Adam and Eve to eat the forbidden fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden. The serpent said that if you eat from the forbidden tree you will see good and evil. After eating the fruit from the tree, Adam and Eve became they were but naked and made clothes out a frig leaf.

This is where humans started for the need of privacy, without the privacy of clothes we would all be naked. In today’s life we need a different type of privacy, we all ( most people ) wear clothes, but we also need to protect our online life and our financial information. A metaphoric frig leaf for our online activities. We life in a time where depending where you live it might be illegal to have an abortion. I am not here to debate if women should or not have abortions. If your bank takes an anti abortion stance and sees that you paid a doctor that is known for performing abortions. They might decide to deny your payment for the abortion or not allow you to use their services because you had an abortion.

Or maybe the government where you live goes to the bank or doctor and says “give us all the information you have on people that had abortion done or visited a certain doctor”. If you paid with a debit card or credit card there will be a record. Cryptocurrencies like Monero are perfect for this type of payment because the abortion clinic cant give the government any information about the women who got the abortion. Monero is like the frig tree that Adam and Eve used to cover themselves.

Couple of years ago, during the Canadian convoy protest, a platform that was used by people to donate money to the movement was hacked. This exposed a lot of donors information. If supporters of the movement used Monero instead of using the platform the Canadian government would have ZERO idea that John Doe donated to the movement. Even if they used Bitcoin, the government could Subpoena the Bitcoin address if they used an decentralised site like Coinbase. If they donated with Monero, again no one would know their identity.

Download information that streaming companies have on you

Did you know that companies like Hulu, Netflix and Spotify allow you to request all the information they have about you? I think that everyone should request the data a company has on you because it holds them accountable and let’s their customers see what kind of data they have on you. In some cases it can take the company as much as thirty days for the email to come that has your data. Requesting you information just doesn’t hold the companies accountable it also allows you to determine if it’s worth using their service. I am a firm believer you have a right to know what information they keep on you, you just, the only problem is that you have to trust the company to be honest on what information they send you, they could easily exclude information that might look bad or data that they don’t want the customers to know they keep. When I requested my information from Netflix they sent me a zip folder with a bunch of CSV files. Inside the CSV files where information regarding every advertisement shown to me, information of when I pause or stop watching a television show. While it might make sense to keep data on where and when I paused a television show, the information could also be used to see how interested or engaged the watcher is while watching a show.

Check out the Hulu page for more information about requesting your information. You can also find information about requesting your information from Netflix. You do not have to live in a state that has data requesting or privacy laws. You can also request your data from Spotify Similar to the Hulu data, the Spotify data includes all the data regarding to the stop and start times and other information about your habits when using the platform. Requesting your data from companies that you use their service helps keeps them accountable even if there is not a law in your state or country that requires them to let you see all the data they have you.

If you are familiar with the programming language Python you can use this Python project to analyze your Netflix watching data. Credits to rifqanzalbina for programming the handy tool.

How Stores track you!

One way that stores can track you as you move around the store is by using BlueTooth information from your phone. They can see how long you stay in certain areas of the store, give you personalized coupons on items you show an interest in. Another way that they can track your purchases is by using reward programs which can allow the store to keep track of all the past items you bought. They might notice that every second tuesday you buy a litter of Mountain Dew, they might send you an alert on your phone saying that there is sale for Mountain Dew. Target once used it tracking technology to determine that a teenager buyer was pregnant before her father knew. Target saw that she purchased certain items that pregnant women usually buy and determined that there was a 87 % chance that she was pregnant. The number is arbitrary but they have some threshold that they can use to determine if a customer is pregnant.

How can you protect your metadata while shopping?

• Turn off Bluetooth. The only downside is you can’t listen to music while shopping
• Don’t use reward programs.
• Use Gift Cards or cash instead of using credit or debit card. This way the store can not tie a name to the purchase.
• Do not enter your phone number or emails at checkout.
• Do not install retailers apps on your phone. They could be used to track your movements while shopping. Another choice is to limit the app permissions, turn off or disable location permission.
• Turn off Wifi do not connect to the store’s Wifi. Every couple of minutes your phone will send out a request looking for WiFi networks you already connected to. A retailer could use this information to identify you. Don’t even connect to the retailers WiFi either, doing so will give information about your phone and could be used to track you as you move around and shop via the WiFi Signal.