12d • Tradecraft
A Case for Privacy in the Digital Age - The Threat is Real—and Accelerating
The Threat is Real—and Accelerating
Every 4.9 seconds, someone becomes a victim of identity theft in the United States. In 2024, over 1.1 million identity theft complaints were reported, and nearly 30% of Americans have experienced identity theft at some point in their lives. Nearly 47% of victims who contacted the Identity Theft Resource Center had been victimized more than once, making this a recurring nightmare rather than a one-time incident.
Bad actors are everywhere. Thanks to the world wide web, there is no limit to attempted theft, harassment, or being taken advantage of.
The digital threat landscape has become truly global. According to the World Cybercrime Index, most cybercrime originates from just six countries, with Russia, Nigeria, China, India, and Romania leading in various categories of digital crime. Nigeria remains infamous for advance-fee fraud and romance scams, while Russia hosts some of the world's most skilled ransomware operators and banking malware developers. India has become a hub for tech-support fraud and fake loan schemes, with the FBI reporting over 88,000 complaints related to tech support scams in 2023 alone. Chinese criminal networks specialize in "pig-butchering" schemes—long-term manipulations that lead to fraudulent cryptocurrency investments—while Southeast Asian scam compounds have become industrial operations, with criminals earning $3 trillion annually from scams and fraud globally, far outpacing income from the global illicit drug trade.
To say nothing about exposure to the less likely but far more disruptive devious methods like stalking, targeting for tiger kidnapping (where someone holds a friend or family member hostage, requiring you to do illegal activities on their behalf), or marking a member of your family for the globally expanding human trafficking industry.
That's why in this article we're going to look at the main 2 objections that I hear most often and how to maintain more privacy, specifically protecting critical information without the overwhelm.
Perhaps you've heard this before: "Why should I encrypt or conceal? I've got nothing to hide. What's the harm in others knowing?" Or how about this one? "Everyone knows, in today's big brother society the age of digital information sharing, it's impossible to hide anything."
Let's first address the first concern.
Five Critical Reasons Executives, High Net Worth Families and Business Owners Should Always Guard Their Personal Information
1. You Are a High-Value Target
High-income individuals face disproportionately higher risks of identity fraud, particularly concerning existing accounts. Business executives don't just have more to lose—they're actively targeted because of their decision-making authority and access to company resources. Business Email Compromise (BEC) attacks specifically target senior executives and finance department staff, with the FBI reporting that BEC scams have cost organizations over $50 billion globally since 2013. When criminals successfully impersonate you, they don't just steal from your personal accounts—they can authorize fraudulent wire transfers, approve fake invoices, and compromise your entire organization's financial security.
2. Your Pattern of Life Reveals Your Vulnerabilities
Every social media post about your business travel, every LinkedIn update about your company's activities, every public schedule creates a detailed pattern of life that criminals exploit. We saw this in real time horrific color with the murder of Brian Thompson, CEO of United Healthcare.
Criminals may spend weeks or months researching their targets before striking. They study your communication style, learn your business relationships, identify your vendors and partners, and wait for the perfect moment—often when you're traveling internationally or occupied with a major deal. One executive lost $46.7 million in a whaling attack simply because criminals knew enough about his travel schedule and business operations to craft a perfectly timed, believable request.
3. The Financial Impact Can Be Devastating
The median loss for individual identity theft victims is $500, but for business executives targeted through BEC schemes, the average loss is $150,000 per incident—and many incidents involve millions. More concerning, 60% of identity theft victims require several weeks to regain control over their identity, with 20% needing several months. During this time, your business operations can be paralyzed, your credit destroyed, and your reputation damaged. For executives, this isn't just personal inconvenience—it's a business continuity threat.
4. Modern Criminals Use AI and Deepfakes
The threat has evolved beyond simple phishing emails. Fraud attempts involving AI deepfakes have surged 2,137% in the past three years, with nearly 43% of identity fraud attempts now using AI technology. Criminals can clone your voice from public speaking videos, create deepfake videos of you authorizing transactions, and generate perfectly written emails in your communication style. In 2024, 49% of companies worldwide reported fraud incidents involving deepfakes.
Let's be real—nowadays, a 12-year-old kid can do this. It's becoming quite popular among the deviously minded.
When criminals can literally impersonate you with AI-generated audio and video, your pattern of life and personal information become weapons they use against you and your organization.
5. Your Data Never Disappears (Information Compromises are Forever)
When your personal information is compromised, it doesn't just affect you today—it creates permanent vulnerabilities. In 2024 alone, the Identity Theft Resource Center recorded over 1.3 billion victim notices about data breaches and compromised accounts. This data can circulate on the dark web indefinitely.
Criminals can use stolen information years later for synthetic identity theft (which now comprises 85% of all identity fraud cases), open fraudulent accounts, file false tax returns under your name, or conduct employment fraud that leaves you dealing with tax complications and potential criminal background issues. The National Public Data breach in 2024 exposed 2.9 billion records, likely affecting every American citizen—demonstrating that even if you protect your data perfectly, third-party breaches can still compromise your privacy.
Now for the Real Objection: "Isn't it Impossible?"
Let's be clear—we're not talking about the most advanced agencies and big tech that use your wifi signal to map your real-time location in your home for "advertising purposes." Although, yeah, I'd prefer if that wasn't going on.
For the basis of this conversation, we're thinking about making it as difficult as possible for low to mid-level criminal organizations and hackers to disrupt, destroy, or steal from our lives through digital means.
Understanding the Criminals and Their Most Common Methods
Who Are These Criminals?
The modern digital criminal operates across a spectrum of sophistication.
At the lower end, you have opportunistic scammers—often working from call centers in India, Nigeria, or the Philippines—who cast wide nets with tech support scams, fake IRS calls (I've had them, heck even my grandma has had these, and her conversations are awesome to listen to), and the ever-popular romance schemes. These operations rely on volume, targeting hundreds or thousands of people hoping a small percentage will fall for their tactics.
Mid-level criminal organizations represent a more serious threat. These groups, often operating from Romania, Brazil, Ukraine, and China, employ skilled programmers and social engineers who develop custom malware, sophisticated phishing campaigns, and coordinated fraud schemes. They're organized like legitimate businesses, with specialized roles: researchers who identify high-value targets (AKA, you), social engineers who craft convincing pretexts, technical experts who deploy malware or bypass security systems, and "money mules" who launder the proceeds.
The most dangerous are professional cybercrime syndicates, particularly those operating from scam compounds in Southeast Asian countries like Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar. These industrial-scale operations combine multiple criminal activities—from cryptocurrency fraud to human trafficking—and generate billions annually. Some Russian-based groups have alleged state protection, allowing them to operate ransomware campaigns that have extracted over $100 million from victims worldwide.
Oh, and by the way—all of those countries hate the US of A and see us as prime targets. It's literally a form of warfare, and you're seen as the pawn.
The Most Common Security Breach Attempts Currently Happening
- Business Email Compromise (BEC) and CEO Fraud - Criminals impersonate executives via hacked or spoofed email accounts to authorize fraudulent wire transfers, accounting for nearly $3 billion in losses in 2023 alone.
- Spear Phishing and Credential Theft - Highly targeted emails using personal details from your social media and public records trick you into revealing passwords that grant criminals access to your company's systems and bank accounts.
- Ransomware Attacks - Malicious software encrypts your company's critical data and demands cryptocurrency payment for its release, causing operational paralysis that can last weeks and cost millions in ransom and downtime.
- Social Engineering and Deepfake Impersonation - AI-generated audio and video that perfectly mimics your voice and appearance allows criminals to authorize transactions that appear completely legitimate, with a 42% higher success rate than traditional scams.
- Data Theft and Synthetic Identity Fraud - Stolen personal information is blended with fabricated details to create fake identities used for fraudulent loans and credit accounts that damage your credit history for years, representing 85% of all identity theft cases.
How to Best Achieve Privacy Without the Overwhelm
Now that we've established the point that protecting our information and maintaining privacy is important, let's look at how we can best achieve this and keep good digital security in our own lives without the overwhelm.
It boils down to good habits kept daily coupled with good technology.
Digital Hygiene Disciplines
- Use a Password Manager and Eliminate Password Reuse - Install a password manager (like KeePass) to automatically generate and store unique, complex passwords for every account, eliminating the single biggest cause of data breaches (81% stem from poor password security).
- Enable Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) on Every Critical Account - Add a second verification step beyond passwords using your phone or security key, which blocks 99.9% of automated attacks even if criminals steal your password.
- Minimize Your Digital Footprint and Practice Information Discipline - Limit what you share publicly on social media and professional profiles to reduce the reconnaissance material criminals use to craft convincing impersonation attacks and time their strikes.
The Compound Effect: These practices create layered defenses that make you an exponentially harder target, causing criminals to move on to easier victims rather than invest time attacking well-defended executives.
The Technology Stack
But this goes hand in hand with the best technology stack for the same purposes.
The best technology for this fits several different categories. This is an oversimplified version in an effort to be easily understood without complicating matters.
We need:
- A solid system that isn't as susceptible to attacks (i.e., laptop and phone)
- A solid service that doesn't share our information to the highest bidder and results in our info being on the dark web (our browser and phone carrier)
- Good messaging applications that limit the contents and relationship mapping (email and text)
On top of this, we should have protection services and devices that screen out illegal/illicit information sharing: a secure router, VPN, antivirus, information scraping service, and devices that encrypt our data at rest and protect data in motion.
Here's a recently updated version of what I'd recommend as both ideal as well as what I use to keep things simple. Security lives on the spectrum of inconvenience. While the most secure usually means the most inconvenience, it should also not be so inconvenient that it restricts your access when you need it. Pirates are famous for burying treasure, and that meant they couldn't simply use a debit card when they wanted to. 😉
My Recommended Tech Stack
- Computer: Luxel-based computer Mark37 laptop
- Browser: Brave / Luxxle
- Email: Proton / Tutanota
- VPN: Mullvad / Proton / Aura
- Encryption: VeraCrypt (for docs on computer)
- Phone: Mark37
- Service: Cape
- Messaging: Wire / Simplex
- Offline: Brier mesh Bluetooth network
- Antivirus: Bitdefender / Aura
I'll provided links for ease of use in the coming weeks as we deep dive.
The focus for this coming month will be the protocols, tech stack, and hacks to mitigate personal info and decrease the damage that can be caused by criminals in the digital space.
Stay safe out there guys. Stand Ready and be Prepared.
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A Case for Privacy in the Digital Age - The Threat is Real—and Accelerating
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