23 - A Behavioural Alternative to the Protection of Privacy

Summary

INTRODUCTION

The frankest and freest and privatest product of the human mind and heart is a love letter; the writer gets his limitless freedom of statement and expression from his sense that no stranger is going to see what he is writing Sometimes there is a breach-ofpromise case by and by; and when he sees his letter in print it makes him cruelly uncomfortable and he perceives that he never would have unbosomed himself to that large and honest degree if he had known that he was writing for the public.

Mark Twain (c 1906)

On 7 February 2016 Joseph ceased to use what had once been his private e-mail account He has never used any of the mainstream e-mail providers such as Google, AOL, Apple or Yahoo Instead, he opened this particular e-mail account at one of the major nationwide providers in the country Y, situated in Europe, where he was born and where he lived at that time That particular e-mail account required a paid subscription, though its annual fee was rather negligible In return, it offered a mailbox free from annoying advertisements, which – in the early years – came attached to the bottom of each message Joseph trusted this provider that his e-mail account would be free of any commercial spying and similar practices, which – from Joseph's point of view – were unwanted (He could not recall ever buying anything suggested by any advertisement, no matter how persuasive they were.)

Back in 2006 it was a conscious choice dictated by an idealistic desire to avoid dominant multinational companies, fuelled largely by the cyberpunk literature and movies of Joseph's childhood Although Joseph has never been a ‘digital native’ – i.e someone who grew up already surrounded by emerging technologies, and thus having acquired, almost automatically, high-tech literacy skills – he has quickly become ‘tech-savvy’ and these technologies have fascinated him ever since When he was around ten years old his parents bought him his first personal computer and this way he has witnessed the most of the technological progress of 1990s His fascination, at that stage, was rather romantic: his enthusiasm grew with each new own discovery.