Frau Mutter Renate

ᥲ mᥲᥒ mᥙs𝗍 ᑲᥱ ᥲ mᥲᥒ

I once overheard a man in the park, though overheard is perhaps the wrong word. Let’s say the man was so discreet that you could have picked up his conversation from six hundred metres away without even taking your headphones off. He was short and stocky, about 1.75, maybe 1.80 if he stood very straight — which he did not. A belly that seemed to enter the conversation before the rest of him did, squeezed into blue work shorts. With the sandals-and-socks combination completing the look, he was one shade of yellow away from a perfect Minion. This was no Khal Drogo, noBali Bey. This was Thomas — let’s call him Thomas — the kind of man who carries more gut than brain, but still argues as though he were defending the Magna Carta. Thomas was on the phone, pacing back and forth, hands flying in the air as if he were fighting with an invisible opponent. From the fragments I caught, he was outraged at the idea of paying in advance. Privacy was his right, he insisted, nearly spitting into the summer air. I stood there with my dog, who gave a bored little huff, and I thought: privacy? With that voice volume? Darling, you are the very opposite of anonymous. Then I noticed his phone: a Samsung. An Android. And as an Apple user, I couldn’t help but smile. You, Thomas, and anonymity — you don’t even know how to spell the word. Thomas, the man in the park, was not only loud but florid in his choice of language. He swore, cursed, and gesticulated as if his very masculinity were on trial. From what I gathered, he was trying to arrange an escort date. She wanted prepayment, he refused – privacy was his sacred right, apparently. I thought to myself: if I were in her position, I would want prepayment too. For safety, for respect – and because Thomas looked more than capable of financing a decent meal, if not a steady supply of lager to prop up the construction site he carried at the front of his body. Here was a man who almost certainly worked on a building site, who declared that he would send no proof, because “all women cheat me.” Yet was he not, in fact, cheating himself – while dialling her number in broad daylight? Let us think for a moment. In Europe, for years now, you cannot even obtain a prepaid SIM without showing your ID. Men like Thomas, more often than not, use a subscription SIM, or worse, the company phone. Anonymity? Gone before the conversation even begins. And how difficult would it really be to trace him, simply from his number? Worse still if he were calling from the company phone, registered under his employer. Imagine the woman ringing the firm:

“Hello, one of your workers called me at 11am. He introduced himself as Thomas. He promised to go to the cash machine, but never paid for the service.”

What consequences might follow from that little disclosure? And then there is the surveillance factor. We forget that in many countries certain trigger words are enough to have calls flagged, if not recorded outright. So much for telephone privacy.

But let us be generous. Let us assume Thomas was clever enough to call from a withheld number. Is he, then, truly anonymous? Not quite. There are now applications and services that claim to unmask hidden numbers – TrapCall, Truecaller, Hiya, to name but a few. Their accuracy varies, but the point remains: what Thomas believes to be private may in fact be little more than a fig leaf in the digital wind. His calls, his movements, his data trail – all already mapped, categorised, and stored.

Anonymity, in this age of smart devices and smart surveillance, is not a fact. It is a fairy tale. And Thomas, waving his arms in the park, shouting about his rights, is its perfect storyteller.

ℙ𝕤𝕪𝕔𝕙𝕠𝕝𝕠𝕘𝕚𝕔𝕒𝕝 𝕀𝕟𝕤𝕚𝕘𝕙𝕥 𝕚𝕟𝕥𝕠 𝕋𝕙𝕠𝕞𝕒𝕤’𝕤 𝕀𝕝𝕝𝕦𝕤𝕚𝕠𝕟 𝕠𝕗 𝔸𝕟𝕠𝕟𝕪𝕞𝕚𝕥𝕪

Anonymity as a Psychological Shield

Thomas clings to cash and “private” calls because anonymity offers a cloak of invisibility—a convenient escape from accountability and social judgement. Psychology calls this deindividuation, where one feels freed from consequence and can behave recklessly or defensively.   

• ᥴᥲsһ ᥲᥒძ ⍴sᥡᥴһ᥆ᥣ᥆g᰻ᥴᥲᥣ ᥴ᥆m𝖿᥆r𝗍

Empirical studies show that people consistently prefer anonymous methods of payment—cash remains symbolic of privacy and control—even when other factors (like liquidity or convenience) might argue otherwise.  Together, these lend Thomas a psychological rationale: he is not hiding from others as much as he is hiding from himself.

𝕊𝕞𝕒𝕣𝕥 ℍ𝕠𝕞𝕖 ℝ𝕖𝕒𝕝𝕚𝕥𝕚𝕖𝕤—𝕎𝕙𝕖𝕟 𝕐𝕠𝕦𝕣 ℍ𝕠𝕞𝕖 𝕚𝕤 𝕊𝕞𝕒𝕣𝕥𝕖𝕣 𝕋𝕙𝕒𝕟 𝕐𝕠𝕦

The real kicker: even when you switch your devices to flight mode or whisper about your deepest secrets near your smart TV, your home is listening.

• ⍴һ᥆ᥒᥱs & smᥲr𝗍 ძᥱ᥎᰻ᥴᥱs

Voice assistants (Siri, Alexa, Google) continuously wait for wake words and can capture ambient audio. Whether or not a recording is made, the data often gets used to build targeted advertising profiles.     

smᥲr𝗍 𝗍᥎s & 𝗍rᥲᥴk᰻ᥒg

Smart TVs often employ Automatic Content Recognition (ACR)—tracking what you watch and feeding data back to advertisers. Disabling features and reviewing privacy settings helps, but awareness is rare.   

ᥴr᥆ss-ძᥱ᥎᰻ᥴᥱ 𝗍rᥲᥴk᰻ᥒg & ᥙᥣ𝗍rᥲs᥆ᥒ᰻ᥴ ᑲᥱᥲᥴ᥆ᥒs

Your smart TV can emit inaudible audio beacons, which are picked up by your smartphone. This enables advertisers to connect your TV habits to your phone profile even if you never interact. Some 234 apps have abused such methods.  

Let’s leave Thomas for a moment and zoom out to the bigger picture—the children. Because the irony is almost poetic: the same world that allows a grown man to click “Yes, I’m over 18” and browse without consequence is the world where pre-teens, some not even ten, are already public figures, catalogued, followed, monetised. Their lives, their images, their very existence online scrutinised, commented on, ranked.

And where do these Thomas-types gather? Telegram groups, WhatsApp channels, corners of Vinted, Instagram threads. Anywhere, really, where the digital veil makes them feel untouchable. Boys and men who snap photos in parks, in bushes, anywhere private life intersects with public space, and then post or trade those images like currency.

It’s not just theory. In Germany, there was a recent incident: a young woman on TikTok caught a man hiding in the bushes, camera in hand, photographing women and children in a lake. When confronted, he panicked—deleted the photos, or at least pretended to but anyone familiar with digital tricks knows deletion rarely means eradication. Trash folders, backups, hidden archives: the game is sophisticated, the predators are trained. This is the cold, unromantic truth: the “anonymous” man is a fiction. The digital world isn’t neutral; it’s a panopticon. Every child, every teen, every influencer under ten is feeding the same machine that Thomas thinks only monitors him. His “safety” is an illusion, their exposure a currency. And when the illusion collapses, the consequences aren’t abstract they are tangible, immediate, and often horrifying. We will expand this discussion next time: child influencers, their exploitation, and how our culture profits from the visibility of the very young. But the warning is already clear: digital shadows are fragile. Privacy is a performance. And the world hyper-connected, hyper-aware—is waiting to catch the blind, the careless, and the entitled.

𝕊𝕥𝕚𝕝𝕝 𝕥𝕙𝕚𝕟𝕜 𝕔𝕒𝕤𝕙 𝕞𝕖𝕒𝕟𝕤 𝕒𝕟𝕠𝕟𝕪𝕞𝕚𝕥𝕪? 𝕋𝕙𝕚𝕟𝕜 𝕒𝕘𝕒𝕚𝕟.

When was the last time you bought a TV? One that lasted more than a couple of years? Remember the days when a vacuum cleaner could be passed down through generations? Those days are gone. We’re outsourcing our chores to robots—robots that listen, watch, and learn more than we realise.

Your fridge knows when you’re out of milk. Your car predicts your next move before you do. And your smart speaker? It’s been eavesdropping on your conversations for years.

Yet, we still cling to the myth that paying in cash shields us from surveillance. But what about the digital breadcrumbs we leave behind? The apps we use, the devices we connect, the data we share without a second thought?

Governments are already accessing our data. In the UK, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) is stepping up to enforce privacy rights, but the damage is done.

So, what’s your move? Will you continue to live in denial, or will you take control of your digital footprint?

It’s time to wake up.

For further reading on digital privacy and surveillance:

• Is your air fryer spying on you?

• Makers of air fryers and smart speakers told to respect users’ right to privacy

• British novelists criticise government over AI ‘theft’