I’ve stayed private for most of my adult life. Network wide dns, vpns, alternative personas online for different purposes, etc. Nonetheless, my personal data has been exposed numerous times.

Once in a while, I’d get into a conversation with a friend or a stranger I met at some random function, and they’d ask how to stay private online and protect their data. I used to go in depth about how to do it, with excitement. Now I just say: be normal, fit in with the crowd, freeze your credit.

As someone that worked in an illegal industry (urban pharmaceuticals), you need to appear normal and hide your crimes. If you just hide your crimes, you stick out and become a target.

Plausible deniability is harder than just total protection.

It's very hard to participate in a digital society while truly remaining private. The things you do to ensure privacy generate their own type of unique signal!

https://chuniversiteit.nl/papers/browser-extension-fingerpri...

You know this, but "normal" patterns are less remarkable.