Welcome to Digital Self-Defense 2.0

Hard to believe, but two and a half years have passed since the first edition of “Fake It!” came out in the fall of 2012. So much has happened, so much has changed and so much has come to light that we felt it was high time to completely redo and update our website.

Digital Self-Defense, we are glad to say, has become a regular conversation topic in Europe and the US. “Fake It!” has been featured at South by Southwest, TEDx and many other events. We have had the good fortune to have the book published in Denmark, Finland, the U.S. and Germany. The German edition, by the way, received tremendous feedback and is now in its third, completely updated print run.

Why does Digital Self-Defense suddenly resonate with people? It’s due to a mix of factors that remind us of the rise of the environmental movement. There have simply been enough big data spills and privacy catastrophes.

Thanks to Edward Snowden’s ongoing revelations. Thanks to a European Court of Justice ruling that forces big Internet services such as Google to remove links upon request. Thanks to regulators on both sides of the Atlantic taking a closer look at what companies are doing and what they shouldn’t do with our personal data. Thanks to a new EU privacy framework that’s slowly but surely coming into force, no matter how hard Silicon Valley tech firms are lobbying against it.

And, most importantly, thanks to citizens and consumers finally waking up to the fact that there is no such thing as “free” and “private” when living in a connected world. You are the product, unless you withhold, obscure and encrypt your data!

Survey after survey shows that people everywhere do care about who knows what about them in what context — whether it’s government entities, web services and mobile apps, ad networks or data brokers.

People are taking steps to better protect their digital identity. By some estimates, an astounding 700 million or one in ten people on this planet are practicing digital self-defense!

They use ad blockers, they block tracking scripts on webpages, they refrain from blindly using Google as their default search engine, they are wary of nosy mobile apps, they don’t really trust Facebook, they even encrypt more of their data at rest and in transit.

These measures may not be sufficient or easily thwarted by constantly evolving technology. There are billions to be made from  tracking us, spying on us and selling us out. And the rise of the Internet of Things will make things even worse. Just consider the thorny question of the “ethics of algorithm.”

But the fight is on, and that’s a good thing!

We hope our new, rejuvenated page helps spur this discussion. As time goes on, we will build out and update the tools section, since we have heard from many of our readers that this part is the hardest: keeping track of what you should do and which tools to trust.

As always, please let us know what you think!

Pernille & Steffan, June 2015