With the recent Sony Pictures hacking of the movie The Interview about the assassination of North Korean President Kim Jong-un and the increasing number of similar invasions of privacy, there is evidence people are talking about changing the way they communicate.

It’s actually making people pick up the phone again.  A recent New York Times article quoted Girls producer Jenni Konner tweet “The worst thing about the Sony hacks is people using the phone again”.

Some thoughts:

• Never put anything into an email or digital communication that cannot be read by you in front of a jury in a court of law.  Think I’m kidding?  Lawyers make defendants read their own poison in open court all the time.
• You can’t unsay anything you say on the Internet and, believe it or not, even deleting messages from a hard drive can be undone.  That, too, happens in lawsuits, as incredible as it may seem.  And don’t get me started on what the FBI can do to bring a hard drive back to life.  So it can be done.
• Even social media services that champion privacy such as SnapChat are not fool proof.  The sender can decide how many seconds up to 12 that a message or image can be seen and then it disappears forever.  Forever? Well, not if the receiver made a quick screen shot of it.  See what I mean?
• We all have the right to say whatever we want but it is harder to assure privacy now in the insecure digital world.  So assume that your digital communication will be read by someone unintended and match the form of communication necessary to the need for privacy.

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