This page contains affiliate links. If you purchase a product through one of them, I will receive a commission (at no additional cost to you). I only ever recommend products that I have personally used and loved. Thank you for your support!
As our world becomes more digital each day, privacy has become a real luxury. But how can you honor your privacy?
I know that this whole privacy topic sounds very technical and daunting, but I want to show you that it doesn’t have to be that way.
In fact, there are many small things you can start doing today that will ensure you greater privacy.
If you are curious about what those things are, read along!
1. Set clear limits and stick to them
First off, you need to determine precisely how private you want to be. What does ‘privacy’ mean to you?
Are you determined to keep your income, love life, and business moves private?
Or perhaps you don’t mind sharing your growing income with your tribe, but you’d never let them know about the specifics of your day to day routine.
Privacy can mean a variety of things to you. Ultimately there is no right or wrong here; you can determine how private you want to be.
However, you should definitely become clear on that and not just decide based on the day’s mood.
Here are a few topics you might want to consider concerning your privacy.:
- Your relationships (friends, family, partner)
- Your location
- Your finances (debt, income, savings, investments)
- Your web history
- Your documents
- Your thoughts and feelings on politics
- Your body (how much skin do you want to show with outfits; nudes)
- Your plans
- Your status quo
2. Post delayed
One thing I like to stay very private about is my status quo, so what I am currently in this moment up to.
I love letting the people close to my heart know what I am currently doing, but I am very selective about who those people are.
So, in essence, I don’t do Snapchat or Insta Stories or anything the like.
And if I’d do them, it would be in a delayed fashion.
So I’d take the pictures at the moment and then post them a few hours or days later.
I’m much more willing to share what I’ve been up to in the past. But somehow, sharing what I am doing at this very moment feels very intimate to me.
An advantage of this is, of course, that people can’t purposely interfere with what they don’t know.
And that puts me more at ease in the present.
3. Don’t announce new goals
The same goes for any goals you might have – especially new entrepreneurial or career-related ones.
I’ve said it often, and I’ll repeat it: My decision not to tell anybody about this blog until it succeeds was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.
If you plan anything significant and new, you are most likely a bit nervous and very excited about it. But then, as you work towards it, things will go a bit haywire here and there, and doubts and frustration will come up.
If that happens, the last things you need are ‘helpful’ friends and family or strangers with unsolicited advice and critique.
You probably struggle with your commitment to the goal and faith in the journey, so you don’t need any additional stones in your way.
If you keep quiet about your goals, you only have to deal with your own worries, and you don’t have to justify any delays in the process to others.
Sure at times, it is better to have an accountability buddy that keeps you on track when you stray too far away from the path.
But I imagine you know yourself well enough to determine whether or not you are self-disciplined enough to manage without one or not.
Read also: 15 Goals To Work On In The New Year
4. Observe how much other people share with you
Another way to honor your privacy is to not give disproportionally to what you get.
Sometimes you might feel like sharing a lot with a friend of yours. However, if you keep being the only one who shares, you should seriously question yourself.
Does someone who doesn’t let you see much of their private life deserve to know about yours?
Sure, someone has to make the first step. I am not trying to discourage you from doing that. However, if time passes and the other person doesn’t follow up, it’s essential to realize that.
I’ve experienced that most often around grades in uni or school.
I’m rarely secretive about my grades. If I’ve done well, I say so without bragging, and if I’ve done badly, I won’t hide it either.
I only recently had the experience of telling a friend my grade only to get no information about their grade back.
And it’s like, sure, I didn’t ask directly for it, but they’re not that oblivious. Also, my grade wasn’t the best either, so what’s to hide? And if I initiated the talk, they don’t need to feel bad about sharing their possibly outstanding grade with me.
So now that this has happened a few times, I was suddenly painfully aware of this onesidedness. It makes one overthink how close you really are to that person.
And this doesn’t have to be a bad thing at all. I won’t cancel a friendship over that, and I like them just the same. But now I know to keep my grades a bit more private unless they initiate a talk about it.
5. Create secret accounts
A fun way to keep some of your interests (or stalker activities) private is by creating ‘secret’ social media accounts.
At least on Instagram, you can create multiple accounts. I have one for business and a private one, and I know people who also have a secret one that nobody knows about.
I like the idea of that because you can browse through Instagram carefree of people seeing who’s pictures you’re liking and who you’re following.
This is especially nice if you let just anybody follow you on your private account.
6. Use a VPN
A VPN grants you anonymity on the internet. It hides your IP address and location so that hackers and governments can’t get access to your data that easily.
Especially if you use public hotspots for business-related topics a VPN might be worth considering.
7. Use a different business address
Sometimes in business, you have to name an address, in the footer of your emails, for example.
Now, most likely, you don’t want every random person that subscribes to your email list knowing where you live.
However, if you work from home and don’t have an office, that’s probably the only address you have.
So in cases like these, it’s helpful to have a virtual business address that you can name.
It’s straightforward and cheap to get one on sites like reship.com.
Read also: 9 Reasons Why You Should Start Your Own Business
8. Turn Your Spotify Playlists Private
Have you ever checked whether your Spotify playlists are private or public?
Perhaps it wouldn’t bother you so much for other people to know the kind of music you listen to.
But some songs and playlists can be really personal to an individual. After all, music can show a lot about our interests and the type of person we are.
That’s why you should at least consider making specific playlists private.
Read also: 35 Songs For Your Badass Boss Babe Playlist
9. Use private browser taps
If a person were to go through your browser history, they could almost write a biography about you.
It is honestly ridiculous how telling those websites and search results are. They reveal your interests, passions, projects, goals, hopes, dreams, friends, how you spend your day, what you buy, and more.
But even just giving someone your phone and they open up safari or Google and see the taps you’ve currently got open is often an uncomfortable situation.
So do yourself a favor and use private taps for more delicate or personal topics that you want to google.
In safari, you can find the ‘private’ button very quickly at the top or bottom of the app, when you can choose between the different open taps.
In Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, and Firefox, you have to click on the ‘…’ button in the top right corner, and it will show you the ‘private’ or ‘incognito’ option.
Beware, if you use a private tab, there won’t be a search history for you to rely on should you accidentally close a tap.
10. Decide whether or not to support a cause
One topic that is always very prickly is politics.
Since there are so many conflicts and judgments with any political opinion, it can be beneficial to keep them private.
However, your voice does matter and not just during votes. So you shouldn’t force yourself to hold back on becoming politically active just to keep your life comfortable.
To honor your privacy, you should decide beforehand what causes you want to support and on which fronts you instead keep quiet publicly.
11. Don’t use the same password everywhere
Look, I get it, we need seemingly millions of passwords, and we can’t possibly choose such complicated ones and remember them all.
Nowadays, tools like the IOS system propose complicated passwords to you and save them, so you don’t have to remember them.
But should you like to choose your password, I recommend you to start a system.
Let’s say you create an Instagram account. Your password could be _Insta#Gram_2020.
So the system you imply could be:
_(first half of the name)#(second half of the name)_(year of creation)
This was just an example I came up with on the spot. Of course, there are infinite possibilities to choose from.
But once you have decided on a system like this, it becomes easy to create different passwords and memorizing them.
I hope this gave you some ideas on how to honor your privacy – one of your most essential assets in the digital world. Don’t you ever forget that!
Do you have any additional ideas on how to honor your privacy? Please share them in the comments down below. I’d love to hear from you!
Until next time!
Sophie
