Social media is, after all, just a small piece of the data puzzle. “We really have two forms of digital selves,” explains Jen King, director of privacy at the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford University. “One is basically all the data that companies collect on us — that's what you find in the hands of data brokers. The other is the one you construct, the one we curate and spend a lot of time trying to control. The two things overlap, but one is controlled by you and the other is not.”
[...] Even something as innocuous as a phone number can be used to reveal where you live, who you're related to, and whether or not you've ever been arrested. This information can also be used to breeze past security questions used to secure online accounts.
[...] Given the scale of the problem and the difficulty of staying completely offline, digital privacy is more important than ever before.