Protecting Your Privacy While Working From Anywhere

Two aspects of a working nomad lifestyle can make you vulnerable to invasions of privacy.

1. Your location can change rapidly and drastically. You might be in Kyoto one day and Bel Air the next. You might spend 6 months in New Zealand and 6 months in Zambia on a regular basis, or you might flit from Peru to Chile to Ecuador with no fixed plan.

2. You rely heavily on the internet to communicate with people, do business transactions, manage your finances, and transmit personal information.

How do these aspects make you vulnerable, and what can you do to protect yourself as you travel the world? First, let’s establish what kind of privacy we’re talking about here.

Types of privacy

Locational privacy refers to your ability to move through public space with the expectation that your location will not be “systematically and secretly recorded for later use,” according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation .

Data privacy refers to your expectation of privacy in the collection and sharing of personal data online and electronically. A relatively new concept, data privacy even has its own day now.

There are many other types of privacy, including sexual privacy, political privacy, and intellectual privacy, but this post will focus on locational privacy and data privacy concerns. Keep reading to learn about what’s possible with technology and how you can take precautions to protect your privacy.

Big Brother is watching you?

Do you travel for a company, or take your laptop along while traveling for pleasure? If you’re using the company laptop, be aware that it doesn’t matter where you are in the world–your boss can look over your shoulder in Thailand just as easily as in your office headquarters. One spyware merchant brags, “This unique spy software allows remote computer monitoring and keylogger recording in real time. The outstanding built-in keystroke recorder allows you to know everything user types in his emails, chats and other programs, including passwords.”

Included among the company’s recommendations for how to use their software is employee activity monitoring. “Find out what they are doing when they are assumed to be working!” the website blithely suggests.

Not only is this a disgusting infraction on your dignity as a human being, but you could be fired while abroad without ever learning the reason. (This is a worst-case scenario–as my husband reminded me, most people with the technical knowledge to spy on their coworkers have far too much work of their own to bother.)

Internet shopping for burglars

Mark Shead at Productivity 51 raises some interesting points about privacy and technology . If you blab about your travel plans on Facebook, MySpace, Linkedin and so forth, you’re broadcasting your absence from home to potential burglars.

Frankly, this sounded a little paranoid to me. I’m not one of these mass frienders who lets any stranger see my personal info. However, some quick research led me to a report called The Digital Criminal .

As part of the study, 100 ‘friend’ or ‘follow’ requests were sent out to strangers selected at random. 13 percent were accepted on Facebook and 92 percent on Twitter. The survey also found that almost two-thirds of 16-24 year olds shared their holiday plans.

Not a terribly large sample, but even if the statistics are inaccurate, I can imagine that it would be a good use of a burglar’s spare time to systematically send out connection requests to hundreds or even thousands of people in their area.

“I call it ‘Internet shopping for burglars,’” says reformed burglar Michael Fraser , who helped prepare the report. ”It is incredibly easy to use social networking sites to target people, and then scope out more information on their actual home.”

Privacy strategies for the working nomad

For working nomads who own homes in multiple countries or are away for extended periods:

Don’t share your address on social media sites. If you must post an address, get a PO box or use a mail forwarding service.
Never leave your house empty. Get someone to housesit, hire a caretaker, or rent it out.
Check references. When you’re traveling, it’s natural to start up conversations with strangers and decide to stay in touch through social media. Occasionally you’ll get requests from strangers and think, “Who’s that? Oh, must be that fellow I met in the airport. ACCEPT!” Unless you can positively identify an acquaintance, ignore or reject out-of-the-blue requests.

Be aware that different countries have widely divergent attitudes and practices concerning privacy. For example:

In Japan, a new mobile phone not only tracks a user’s position, but also informs spies whether the user is walking, climbing stairs, cleaning, and so on.
In the UK, secondary schools spy on children with secret cameras and hidden microphones, even in toilets.
In Israel, airport walls flash images intended to evoke a psychological reaction from potential terrorists.

In the future, international privacy laws may create a consistent policy across nations, but for now, anything’s possible. So if you want peace of mind, take personal responsibility for protecting your locational privacy and data privacy.