The Dangers of KYC - Know Your Customer

TASK: Get into the minimising the time you spend giving away personal data. If a site asks you to upload a copy of your  passport think twice. It might be an airline, insurance company, bank etc but once your passport is on the internet it just ends up on various third party databases. Do whatever you can to go old school and stop uploading your important personal documents to the internet.

WHY: Everywhere you go now whether it be to shop line online, buy something simple at a real shop or use some sort of financial tool three seems to a be a very strong drive to collect your personal data. For financial transactions in particular Governments in most jurisdictions around the world enforce very stringent regulations known as  "Know Your Customer" (KYC) rules. These force institutions to collect your personal data including copies of your important documents which often need to be uploaded. These are sent to databases often run by third parties, therefore you do not control that data, nor does the government. The database becomes a honey pot for hackers, a target. So by enforcing draconian identity laws governments risk those databases being hacked and then your precious identity will be leaked to the highest bidder. Overall this can make the system less safe.