One thing that bothered me, regarding some bloggers I follow, is that people are sharing too much personal information online. I understand that this may be a personal matter and I have no right or power to control what is being published by others or how they choose to respect their own privacy, yet it bothered me.

I don’t know if they do this knowingly but some people share too much of their personal information. I do it too. My recent post about watching Godzilla movies is an example of unnecessary personal information on internet.

Why do we do it? I think because it’s fun and we have an urge to socialize through tools we have. I don’t use social networks and I feel I satisfy my need of socialization with posting such personal data in hope of forming connection to other people. I don’t know how correct that is.

Anyway, that feels unhealthy. As one who cares about privacy, I find it very upsetting that we voluntarily share such information. However, this is a personal blog, the blogs I read are also mostly personal. Everything we do and everything we say is personal so isn’t every post somehow sharing personal information?

Isn’t every service we sign up for, every mailing list we join, every blog we subscribe to, every video we watch and every message we send a piece of our personal information and data we share with others?

Internet is not safe and I understand this a bit more and better every and each day. If we’re connected to internet, at least a bit of our personal data is being shared with others whether we like it or not. I was thinking that some people are careless about what they share online on their personal blogs and homes, then I realized I do it as well, and came to understanding that we all do it no matter how much we care.

We share our information because internet is built that way. It starts when we connect to internet and share our IP and some other information with ISPs and ends when we enter our identifier into a form to get something in return.

So maybe writing about what I watch online or what that random guy wears or where were we last Sunday is the least of our worry and we should focus on broader and wider violation of our privacy both online and offline. At least what we write on our blogs are voluntary sharing of information, and not done by some mega corporation to make benefit upon our personal lives.

To do that, of course, we should start using free software and privacy-focused services. We should avoid proprietary programs, which they almost always spy on us, and change our privacy practices. We should start respecting ourselves more, and start to understand that our data is valuable, enough that corporations are willing to pay billions of dollars to get it.

I thought I share too much personal information online, but that’s not the case. My privacy gets more violated by those who collect my personal information without my real consent. They are willing to pay billions of dollars in fines rather than to stop it (example, example, example, example), that’s how valuable our data is.

We should stop this. Governments won’t do enough, as they benefit from these privacy violations, so the real change will be done by people. It’s people, and those who care enough to change, that will change how we’re treated. Nobody cares enough about online privacy except us, who are victims of violations.

If Mark Zuckerberg, who is one of biggest violators of people’s privacy, cares so much that he refuses to share his own personal data, we should refuse it too. If privacy is so much important than people who run these mega privacy-violating corporations value it, then we should value it as well.

I am deeply worried about how our personal information is handled. It’s not just a matter of advertisement, but it’s a matter of freedom. The first step to remain free, from bad people both online and offline, is to care about our privacy. Liberty is so much more valuable than anything else, and I believe people know and understand that, yet we don’t have the prerequisite of it, which is to be able to be private.

Privacy is needed so we can practice our rights, such as freedom of speech. Without privacy, and without protection from the violators, we are doomed to lose everything we have, everything our fathers fought for, the most important of which to be our liberty and freedom.

So use free software, use freedom and privacy-respecting programs and services, and know the value of your information so you can respect yourself more and better.