Obsessed with Privacy

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I’m a guy who suffers from OCD and unfortunately, I’ve been obsessed with privacy for a while now.

I like privacy, I won’t deny it, but this obsession is stronger and it’s preventing me from enjoying my passion and my life.

Every time I come to this forum and read the various topics, my heart starts racing with fear of discovering something I don’t like (using x instead of y, not doing this or that).

I think about privacy all day long, I can no longer enjoy my life, and it seems like the world is full of data mining.

I often think about my Google account with 8-9 connected devices that I lost some time ago (yes, I tried everything to recover it, but unfortunately, it’s impossible, and it even had 2FA enabled).

I also think about when I have to disconnect VPN/Private DNS for some reason or another, and when I do, I start thinking obsessively that by disconnecting them, my IP address has been leaked or that telemetry apps without private DNS have been able to send all the accumulated telemetry data on the device that they couldn’t send before because of the DNS.

It’s a constant battle. For example, It has happened to me that I couldn’t stop thinking about whether the people connected to the same WiFi as me had viruses on their PC (which could have compromised the WiFi).

I have a threat model: avoid data mining and phishing/viruses. And that’s enough for me because I don’t live in a Totalitarian country, and I think I have a fairly strong setup (Linux, Graphene OS, Proton Mail, FOSS apps, alias etc. etc. etc.).

I also know that privacy is not black or white, it’s a marathon not a sprint and blah blah blah

I’m already in therapy and it’s going “well”, but one of the pieces of advice that I find difficult to follow is staying in doubt. It seems that with privacy you should never leave anything to chance, so I tend to think about every possible thing that could compromise it without stopping.

Any advice is welcome.

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Sounds like you’re doing the right thing and compared to others have little to worry about (meaning relative to what’s in your control.)

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I was going to say that you should go to the therapy, but seems like that’s already the case.

That’s why you should have your own threat model, and since you already have one, just be cautious to what you post online and utilize opsec.

Also remember, the only way to deal with OCD (except using OCD-pills) is to not care. The longer you think about “doubting”, the longer it’s going to bother you.

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Take a look around the forum; you are far from the only one to experience privacy burnout. Here is a good post I found:

I would recommend taking a step back from caring about privacy, at least in the short term. Let yourself go back to using the tools that work best for you, even if they aren’t necessarily the most privacy-friendly or are closed-source or whatever. The reality is that it doesn’t matter if it is having such a profound impact on your quality of life. Letting yourself incorporate more devices, tools, or services which are more convenient will, I think, help you find a more sustainable balance.

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Privacy is one of those rabbit holes that people don’t really tend to talk about. It’s great that you care about these type of things; unfortunately, that also means that a lot of folks IRL won’t understand why you might take these drastic measures.

It’s already hard enough breaking away from the Apple/Google ecosystem, but there is the social aspects as well. Pursuing privacy-friendly measures means that you are also isolating yourself from these established societal norms. If you go too far down the rabbit hole, you may feel a bit isolated and obsessed.

I don’t really know your life, but there is always a balance between privacy and peace of mind. If dialing back a bit won’t harm your safety, you should probably consider doing so. None of this is worth your mental wellbeing.

Let us know if you need anything :yellow_heart:

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Thanks guys for everything, I don’t feel like I suffer from privacy fatigue, in this I’ve found my balance, but what happens to me is doubting and obsessing over what I haven’t done to protect my privacy (e.g. turning off the vpn while watching YouTube gives me a lot of anxiety thinking that google can know what I’m watching)

or sometimes it happens to me to think if that cracked program I installed a while ago is or not safe and so forth

maybe the key is however to stay with uncertainty and that I can’t dedicate and control every time anything (e.g. a telemetry domain that enters and is not recognized by the blocklist)

thanks again :heart:

Of course I’m open to other advice/opinions

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In few words, you can only control what’s under your control. Don’t feel bad if you’re not getting the progress you’d like to get. You’re already doing your best!

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I feel this one man. As others have already mentioned, there is a lot that you can’t control. I have GAD/PTSD from childhood trauma and from war, which can cause uncontrollable waking dreams. When reading about privacy practices, I experience background images of people running after me or exploiting some weakness in my setup and then hack devices in my house or learn information that puts me and my family at risk.

I become increasingly paranoid and this only feeds into the anxiety spirals but seeing a talk therapist/psychiatrist helps me challenge these thoughts. I can’t recommend seeking professional help enough for anyone who does find this thread. Even if you’ve had real issues with agents targeting you in the past or if you’ve done something illegal that has made you seek out privacy, you’ll function much better if you get help. Getting back a sense of peace and not letting anyone or any system that has targeted you steal your peace or learning how to cope if you’ve done something wrong and how to stop doing it or fix it, etc…

I personally try to refocus my thoughts on what I’ve learned about how the brain works and consider the faulty wiring I’ve picked up from early formative experiences that reside in my head. Thinking through it as a systems problem strangely enough makes it feel like something closer to a minuscule computer issue. Like pushing a bad configuration to production and just having to revert that line of thinking as it just causes a feedback loop. Then once I visualize it that way, I can focus on what others say here, there’s only so much you can control and you have to flex the muscle of accepting that lack of control.

I wish you well on the privacy and mental health journey!

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I realized that I often go down length privacy rabbit holes that have diminishing returns for my privacy. What has helped me is talking to an LLM to ground things in a more realistic (or at least more objective) context. I actually started going down a fingerprinting rabbit hole earlier today and asked a question like this:

[Snippet of convo explaining my current setup]… Can you rank the privacy leakage on a score from 1-10 with regards to <insert default scenario>,<insert privacy hardening I've done>, <insert perfect scenario>

Realizing that I’m closer to the perfect privacy setup than I realized put things in context and walked me back from another lengthy privacy side-project. I then followed that up w/:

Of the steps I’ve taken and the steps you’ve suggested, please explicitly calculate how many points each step was worth in achieving a perfect score of 10 pts.

When things are more explicit this way, I can make a more measured decision… “Do I really want to do XYZ if it will take 2 hours and only increase my privacy protection by 0.25 points?”

Framing privacy on a scale is more digestible from a rational perspective and really reinforces the security/privacy idea of Pareto’s Principle. Often, we overlook that the simple steps we took when we first got interested in privacy had the largest privacy benefit, and even as we get more experienced and technical with our privacy solutions, it still leads to diminishing returns,

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This might be controversial, but privacy isn’t a goal in itself. Privacy is a tool to achieve key values that you cherish.

Try asking yourself the question “ Why do you value privacy?

In my case, it was freedom, esp knowing I can live my life without thinking about what consequences there will be.

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I think this isn’t controversial at all.

Another way to frame this is to ask yourself what does “done” look like for your current privacy goals? When could that reasonably be acheived? Are there tradeoffs for how long this will take versus what your true threat model?

This isn’t to imply privacy isn’t an ongoing practice, but defining a tangible end for your current objective becomes a lot less overwhelming and allows you to scritinize the time youre spending on it and plan things out.

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The fact is that if I did this, it would most likely become a “reassurance” for me, and in OCD, that only makes things worse. Sometimes you really have to accept the danger and avoid ruminating. But thank you for sharing your method :heart:

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I just wanna say, this video helped me a lot to reduce my stress with privacy

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All that this person says in the video is not 100% correct. They are obviously exaggerating to make a point to explain the many things you need to do.

But don’t believe 100% of everything this person says. There is always a balance to be had.

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You shouldn’t buy 100% of what anyone says, not least because it simply won’t all apply to you. Privacy is a very personal journey and everyone has their unique threat model.

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I got obsessed with privacy when my life fell apart. I ended up getting diagnosed for MDD and ADHD. Due to my inconsistent mental health, i have been mainly unemployed and isolated. This led me down the rabbit hole of privacy and insanity. Continuously resetting my devices, switching between linux/windows, ditching phones and getting a dumb phone to now a GOS phone. Degoogling for the sake of degoogling. Forcing family to use other platforms to talk to me. Using airplane mode whenever i am leaving my home. In the end, it all just led to more isolation.

I still struggle with this, but i am trying to expose myself to more mainstream options. I am using whatsapp to talk to my family again. I have the PlayStore installed again. Im not saying to give up privacy because i sure as hell can’t after everything i know now, but I recommend finding a reasonable balance.

Your health should be your number one priority. Take care of yourself, friend.

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@ProtectiveGuardian Please stop with the 100% ChatGPT posts.

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Forgive the rant in advance.
Normally a lurker here but had to comment because I relate too much to this. I also am a sufferer from OCD so I understand the pain of obsessing over the rabbithole like this. It doesn’t help that fear mongers make you feel like you’re not doing enough. This was especially the case for me once the linux insecurities started becoming a point of conversation . Made me feel like all the effort I did was fucking meaningless. My ruminations went wild .
Atleast you have a threat model as someone who has been for around this space for 10 years there’s nothing worse than just blindly following advice and getting lost in the abyss of intimidation and undoing. What I learned from that experience is I was using privacy as form of coping mechicanism and the best thing I did was take a break. I did other coping mechanisms some healthier some not so much. You’re already in therapy and you’re already aware and you clearly have done great steps honestly based on what you provided you seem good where you are. You must find the difference between a legit threat and a illegitamate intrusive thought. I get thats easier said than done. I still have multiple ruts myself about it however unless you’ve had a serious change in threat model you shouldn’t worry so much and the only way to stop worrying so much is to stop compulsively checking. Its better reinforce a defenisve strategy in face of a threat instead of trying to stop it all. Context does matter. You still are less fucked than someone who has been entirely complacent and I think thats important to keep in mind. My advice there is no point in trying to live privately if that life can’t be enjoyed. There is such thing as a law of diminishing returns and honestly there are things people simply cant teach you.

What I’ve discovered recently for my privacy journey and have a direct correlation with authentic interactions.
When I am around people in person, my phone is off or in airplane mode. Its a sign of respect for the people Im around and
when the conversation is taken digitally particularly for sensitive things like venting,or even just innocent flirting. I’ll push peers towards Signal or atleast WhatsApp And it makes me appreciate the tools at my disposal alot more because now its more than just a checkbox but an experience but your milage may vary

Also sometimes you have to make sacrifices and compromises. For example I don’t use Tor even though fingerprinting is a concern, why? because I hate that it bypasses my network restrictions and its heavy association with criminality triggers the fuck out of me. Am I missing out on potential protection? yes but I dont care. This is supposed to be a hobby do not let it drain you and find other things to fufill yourself with. I myself am trying to get back to my music but privacy has been really good distraction so I gotta follow this same advice too, You are far from alone. I hope something of this made sense for you :heart:

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This made my skin crawl, it’s the exact same thing that happens to me, OCD is a big bad liar. (don’t use this phrase as reassurance :slight_smile: )

The same thing happened to me when I read about the discussion about fingerprinting and how “normal” browsers (Librewolf, Brave etc.) were not enough, I just stopped my rumination and said: “okay, I don’t care, I’m going to keep using what I’m using”.

We should remind ourselves more often that privacy is just a tool for living our lives, not replacing it.

The day will come when we die, and all of this will lose all meaning, so let’s really treat our passion as a passion and not an obsession.

Thank you so much for sharing your experience; you have been a great help to me :heart:

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OCD is a disorder, so inherently there is an irrationality to it. Just like telling an anorexic, “just eat food,” is the rational answer, but what makes it a disorder is the mental block in the way of making the rational behavior.

Rationally, you need to understand that your threat model doesn’t justify the mental investment - you are not at risk of getting arrested, shot, etc. One tip for relieving anxiety is to think about how the “worst case” is not so bad.

I used to get anxious when flying out of fear I would get stuck in traffic on the way to the airport, miss my flight, get an uncomfortable seat, etc. and I realized that the anxiety was worse than the experience. I could say, “what is the worst that could happen?” The answer is I maybe have a crowded ride, I miss a meal, I miss a flight and have to wait." Realizing this, its actually nothing to obsess about because that is the WORST. Applying this to privacy. The WORST case, is you get targeted ads, you get profiled, you end up in a database somewhere. How does this translate to an actual harm in your real life? Its relatively low risk still.

Many people with OCD struggle with obsessive hand washing. The irrationality of this is that the WORST CASE of not washing hands is you get sick. Ok. Well everyone gets sick sometimes and you manage just fine! So you can ruin your life fretting over hand washing, or just understand that getting sick a few times a year is not worth fretting over.

That’s what makes OCD a disorder. But you can work on your internal self talk to tell yourself, “The rational choice is X” and maybe over time this obsession will lift.

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