“Just a hint of things to come. When your darkest secrets leak – it won’t be from Google. A low-tier service that has your behavioural profile gets hacked or purchased by some seedy site owners, and all your activities are cross-referenced.” Trevor_Goodchild

[UPDATE 22 Nov 2019: 1.2 billion records leaked from exactly the sort of sketchy data aggregation merchants this quote addressed]

This Is a Reddit comment on an article about how a porn producer is suing a TV executive for pirating gay porn.

He or she is right. The biggest risk to your truly darkest secrets being exposed does not come from Google or other big Internet companies who tend to obey privacy laws and have an interest and ability to protect your data. Nor does it come from western intelligence agencies whose, again, work under the law.

The risk comes from sketchy profilers who cross-reference your IP and other digital fingerprints, linking all your online activities and personas. It also comes from lawsuits – capricious or not – where discovery processes mean you may have to hand over deeply sensitive emails and other records. I remember the newspapers mocking Max Clifford about the size of his penis after that intimate detail was exposed in one of his trials.

No record is safe. Your diary can be subpoena’d. Your medical history can become a court record. Your emails can easily become public property entirely through legal means. This is especially true to work emails. Just remember that when you gossip about a colleague or share some other private information, you could be one anti-trust lawsuits from having that in the internet archive.

So watch what you commit to written record. Assume absolutely everything done on work equipment or at work is never private. Learn to protect your privacy online. The Electronic Freedom Foundation’s Surveillance Self Defense is a great starting point.