Be wary of click-bait articles like the one recently published in The Times, "
Nobody cares about your dull life, my friend" (deliberately not being linked to by the way). Fortunately it's partially hidden behind a paywall so those not subscribed to that website won't be subjected to the diatribe of someone that either doesn't understand how data is collected and used, or does and just doesn't care (seems more of the latter than former given the supercilious tone of the article - "
if you have nothing to hide...").
"Your life is dull, my friend[1]. Your affairs are drab and uninteresting[2]. Nobody wants you stupid PIN or your £832 life savings[3]. Nobody cares if you wrote a rude limerick about your boss[4] or signed an online petition in favour of seal-clubbing[5]... [6]"
[1] don't presume...
[2] cf. [6].
[3] tell that to
Talk Talk customers finding their personal information being used to carry out various frauds, or
members of Ashley Madison (ostensibly men it should be noted) being blackmailed after their details were obtained, or the
c.500 million (UK) lost to credit card fraud in 2014 (£1+ billion for all types of personal finance fraud). The list is endless...
[4] except perhaps "your boss" who might then fire the individual (freedom to speak goes both ways, freedom + consequence).
[5] tell that to
Sir Tim Hunt, or
Richard Dawkins, or any number of persons, famous or
not, that have fallen foul of the online (often Twitter based) 'offense brigade' mobs, who, with the backing of poorly researched main-stream press, including the Times, often results in people loosing their jobs for the things they say. The list is long for this one too...
[6] it should be a great surprise then, just how much money and effort criminals and Governments alike put in to acquiring such "uninteresting" data, GCHQ, the NSA, spying agencies around the world spend trillions, at
tax-payers expense, in their efforts to do so. Either it's a quango (con), or contrary to the article authors statement(s), our personal data is incredibly valuable for all sorts of reasons.