A quick reminder about digital privacy

There’s been a lot of buzz lately surrounding the UK’s Online Safety Act. While it originally passed back in October 2023, it’s been back in the headlines recently because several key provisions just came into force over the last few days.

And not surprisingly, a lot of people are worried.

One of the major concerns is that the British government could potentially gain access to personal files, documents, and photos that are stored in the cloud.

To be clear, the Online Safety Act does not explicitly grant the government direct access to cloud-stored files. But it does impose a legal responsibility on cloud storage providers to monitor and detect certain types of content.

That, in turn, has raised widespread fears about so-called “back doors” being built into cloud services—essentially allowing the government a hidden key to your entire digital life.

Here’s the bottom line: virtually every major cloud storage provider already works with government agencies and will comply with any valid legal request or subpoena for user data.

This includes everything from your emails and private messages to your cloud-stored documents and photos. And we’re talking about some of the largest tech companies in the world—Google, Facebook, Dropbox, Microsoft, Apple, and so on.

This is nothing new.

If you use Google, Yahoo, or Microsoft for your email, those companies already have complete and total access to every email you’ve ever sent or received. Even if you “deleted” an email from your inbox or trash, they retain copies. They keep everything. And when they receive a valid legal request, they won’t hesitate to turn it over.

The same applies to services like Dropbox. They have full access to your files stored in the cloud. If authorities come knocking with the right paperwork, they’ll hand over your files.

Even Apple, which has a reputation for privacy and data protection, began hashing every photo uploaded to iCloud in an effort to detect known illegal content; it’s the digital equivalent of taking fingerprints of your photos.

Apple also holds the encryption keys to most users’ data by default. Unless you’ve gone out of your way to enable Advanced Data Protection, Apple can access your email and iCloud files.

Some people, of course, brush this all off with the tired old excuse: “Well, I have nothing to hide.” But that logic completely misses the point.

If people have nothing to hide, why have passwords at all? Why not post the last 12 months of bank statements and medical records to Instagram? Or install a camera in your bathroom and live stream that to the world?

Privacy is not about hiding anything. It’s a basic human right.

So with that in mind, the easiest recommendation I could make to boost your online privacy is to use Proton.

With cloud services, Proton Mail, Proton VPN, and even new documents features, they’re essentially a one-stop shop that provides all types of encrypted services.

This is definitely not a sponsored article and we gain nothing from mentioning them here. It’s just that this is one of the only providers that designed its service so that they cannot access most of your content.

To be clear, Proton does cooperate with law enforcement— specifically the authorities in Switzerland (where they are based). In fact, they’re very transparent about it and publicly explain what kind of information they can hand over—which includes IP addresses, email subject lines, and certain metadata.

But the actual contents of your files and emails? They don’t have access at all. This has been tested multiple times in Swiss courts, and each time it’s been confirmed—Proton cannot turn over data they don’t possess.

A lot of people also talk about VPNs, which can help by masking your IP address and making it appear as though you’re browsing from another location.

But be careful—VPNs are not a cure-all. Some providers, like PureVPN, have in the past claimed to offer total privacy, only to be caught logging user data and turning it over to authorities.

There are plenty of other options out there too, depending on how secure you want to be. Personally, I like to self-host on my own encrypted file server. But that requires a bit of technical skill—and while it’s not that hard, it’s not for everyone.

But the point is, there are threats out there to your personal privacy, and it is better to do something about it sooner rather than later. Otherwise, you’re allowing big tech companies and governments to amass all sorts of data on you that they will forever have access to.

And we just don’t know what they will do with that, or who will control it, in the future.

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