There’s a big societal worry, in general, about the safety and privacy of personal information in the Internet age. In some cases, like banking and medical records, that worry is well-founded. But for the most part, people should just act like they and their data are in public, and exposed. That should usually be OK, because the benefits outweigh the costs, or as Tom Yager recently put it:

You can’t live in a cloud and expect the safety and isolation of an underground bunker. Information that I care to keep secret travels by Federal Express or is accompanied by a handshake. I take for granted that my electronic correspondence, including phone calls, is up for grabs, so the sum of my nonsecrets is not that interesting.