And if a product is free, you are the product; A phrase coined by a world-famous American sculptor and video artist Richard Serra in 1973. These days, that phrase is everywhere and often used referring to anti-giant tech corp narrative.

Have you heard something along that line? Now, just remember that line and whenever you're signing up to an app, websites, etc and don't forget to ask yourself a simple question, am I the product?

Recently in Indonesia, the government sites have been bombarded with data leaks. The leaks included citizen personal identification from their national ID to even phone numbers. I followed the case closely because of my interest in cybersecurity and also privacy protection. This was jarring and difficult to read, especially for someone like myself, who protected my data and personal privacy as much as I could. With those recent leaks, I felt like my effort was in vain. Truth be told, it is difficult living in the country as a regular citizen to avoid so many websites and apps they created.

They have websites for just about everything and citizens must use them if they still want to use public services. Evading these websites is hard especially these days. At the same time, it's not the first time I heard about data leaks in the country, in fact since I frequent some sites, I read about it now and then. Despite those leaks happened in the past, strangely they still didn't arm their website with better protection. Because of the leaks that's very viral, it got me thinking about people's awareness of their data and their privacy. It’s something I am about to discuss a little bit and maybe serves as a reminder.

At some point in life, I avoided many proprietary websites and applications;although I still do these days, I am not as extreme as I was. What I did in the past was that I tried my best to avoid any applications that I don't know the source codes for. I also read terms and agreements whenever I use something. Then, after a while I started using twitter, discord, etc just because I want to socialize more. As I need to make money, I ended up slaving myself away through sites like fiverr and similar. Eventually, keeping that pseudonym can be exhausting and I fell into peer social pressure. Hatts off if you still stay anon and never reveal yourself.

This is why I hold on to believe that "human" is the weakest link in any security, even tech security. I also admit that I often gave away too much information just because I want to look a bit more approachable. Although now with data leaks in the country, there's really nothing to protect anymore.

Why do I care about my data and why should you?

I rarely see life through the darkest possible way but I just like to be cautious. Doxxing, hacking, persecuting someone just because they say something online are a thing these days. It's increasingly scary with people becoming karens and kevins just because they don't like something/disagree with something. There are many cases where people impersonate someone online for whatever reason including monetary gains. There are people who steal, who take advantage of someone's personal information because the banking security system isn't advanced enough or just for other reasons. There are many ways that could go wrong when our data is in the hand of someone who is desperate enough for money or just an overall psychopath. There are also people who can dislike you just by being nice and sometimes, they go to extreme lengths just to ruin your life. These scenarios aren't fictional as many of these happened and I noticed some of them first hand.

But you're on Hive, whatever you say is available on chain, permanently and can't be retracted.

What about being on hive, doesn't it reveal a lot of information about yourself or us?

You have the choice to stay anonymous. You can sign up on the site through an anonymous way that won't even be linked back to you, you don't really have to introduce yourself holding a sign revealing your face. You have the choice to write under a pseudonym and just share whatever you want. Whether you want to share what meals you had, your travel experiences, or even just your opinion, you can do it all by being anonymous and you know just exactly how the data is handled. In short, you're in control of your data and what you share. So whatever I share here has been under my consideration that I want to share those with all of you.

With people slowly gaining access to blockchain, cryptocurrency, and using social media web3, I just hope that they understand how important it is to know that protecting our data isn’t an easy job. Remember that your action, transaction, whatever you say is, on chain whatever that is and can be found. We’ve been outsourcing this task to a big corporation and now, we are given the option to take the matter in our hands. How are you going to handle your information and data?