You’ve no doubt heard the saying, ‘Don’t put all your eggs in one basket’, but have you ever thought how it applies to data privacy?

The egg/basket advice is basically about spreading risk and diversifying assets, right? If all your valuables (eggs) are in one place (basket) and that place is compromised (basket breaks), you’ll lose all your valuables. Eggs are fragile and baskets break, so you’re facing a real risk, but it’s one you can easily mitigate by spreading your eggs across more baskets.

And that’s where the link to data privacy comes in. If we put all our personal information in one place (the internet) by using it everywhere we interact online, then we risk losing all that information in one incident (data breach, identity theft, credit card fraud etc.). What’s more, we risk having it correlated by data brokers or ad tech, stolen by hackers, or sold by the service operator itself.

So, in our digital lives, ‘Don’t put all your eggs in one basket’ is really talking about compartmentalization—categorizing and separating our private data into many different compartments to reduce the impact when it is compromised. Compartmentalization recognizes no system is perfect, breaches are always possible, so it’s wise to manage the risk. You might lose an egg or two, but you won’t lose them all. 

We already compartmentalize in the offline world. We organize our closets (socks in one drawer, gym clothes in another), our banking (separate accounts for everyday expenses, bills, savings and emergencies), and our email (filed in folders). We even compartmentalize our daily interactions (work/social) and our weekend activities (drinking buddies/family time). Compartmentalization in the online world is essentially the same—but arguably far more urgent.

Compartmentalization gives people control. Our digital privacy can feel as fragile as those eggs, but we can act to protect it in much the same way by separating our personal information into different compartments and limiting impact.

MySudo makes compartmentalization simply by giving you up to 9 separate Sudos to use as your “compartments”. Set up your Sudos to suit your real life privacy and organizational needs, and then always use your Sudo details instead of your own. If one Sudo gets caught in a data breach, it doesn’t matter. You haven’t used your own information and you can mute or delete that affected Sudo and move on.