A Case for Privacy in the Digital Age - The Threat is Real—and Accelerating
The Threat is Real—and Accelerating Every 4.9 seconds, someone becomes a victim of identity theft in the United States. In 2024, over 1.1 million identity theft complaints were reported, and nearly 30% of Americans have experienced identity theft at some point in their lives. Nearly 47% of victims who contacted the Identity Theft Resource Center had been victimized more than once, making this a recurring nightmare rather than a one-time incident. Bad actors are everywhere. Thanks to the world wide web, there is no limit to attempted theft, harassment, or being taken advantage of. The digital threat landscape has become truly global. According to the World Cybercrime Index, most cybercrime originates from just six countries, with Russia, Nigeria, China, India, and Romania leading in various categories of digital crime. Nigeria remains infamous for advance-fee fraud and romance scams, while Russia hosts some of the world's most skilled ransomware operators and banking malware developers. India has become a hub for tech-support fraud and fake loan schemes, with the FBI reporting over 88,000 complaints related to tech support scams in 2023 alone. Chinese criminal networks specialize in "pig-butchering" schemes—long-term manipulations that lead to fraudulent cryptocurrency investments—while Southeast Asian scam compounds have become industrial operations, with criminals earning $3 trillion annually from scams and fraud globally, far outpacing income from the global illicit drug trade. To say nothing about exposure to the less likely but far more disruptive devious methods like stalking, targeting for tiger kidnapping (where someone holds a friend or family member hostage, requiring you to do illegal activities on their behalf), or marking a member of your family for the globally expanding human trafficking industry. That's why in this article we're going to look at the main 2 objections that I hear most often and how to maintain more privacy, specifically protecting critical information without the overwhelm.