Companies and app publishers will do their best to convince you that they truly care about your privacy and are just collecting your data to improve your experience or for statistical/marketing purposes. The one thing they can never legally promise you is the total protection of your data. Why? Because company-owned private information databases get hacked all the time. There are no guarantees that at some point in the future your private data won’t end up in the hands of a malicious entity.
You may not think much about the pictures you post, the comments you make underneath YouTube videos or the items you’ve bought online last year, but there may come a time when you might become the target of a disgruntled employee or a neighbour who got their hands on a detailed log of your old online activity. Trying to run for public office or even applying for a new company job can become a minefield if your private data has been leaked out of a database server somewhere and has become accessible by the public. Unfortunately, we are all living in a time when the right data taken out of context can damage even the best of reputations – a trend that isn’t likely to fade away anytime soon.
