The Future of Privacy Is Plausible Deniability

Say that you’re 70 and you unexpectedly learn that you require a surgery that will keep you in the hospital for a week. You adamantly don’t want any of your grandkids to find the will in your house that reveals who among them gets what. You suspect they’ll be snooping against your wishes. And you have 12 hours at home to prepare. You could pick a hiding spot that they probably wouldn’t guess but might find. You could put the will in a padlocked trunk and take the key with you. But what if they still find some way into the trunk? In fact, your grandson does find a way to remove the wooden bottom, look through its contents, replace them, and reseal the trunk without you even knowing.

Hiding something is one way to keep it secure. Overwhelming would-be snoops with plausible decoys is another way. Yet virtually no one’s email inbox is deliberately seeded with fake messages so that prying eyes cannot entirely know what is real. Imagine a startup called Plausible Deniability LLC.