It started like many conversations

At the beginning of the year, I wanted to make money while Marie Kondo-ing my belongings. So I put up new shoes, small appliances, skateboards (what, you too?) and other electronic items gathering dust.

This particular Bluetooth speaker had caught the eye of someone. I'd done this many times before and sold many things and have racked up a good rating on the buy-and-sell platform. I managed the sale by scheduling the delivery and waiting for the payment to come through. Except, it didn't.

I just got scammed, y'all!

The online manhunt begins

The thing about being scammed is that I never thought it'd happen to me. Most scammers are sellers, and I was the seller in this scenario. Though, to be fair to me, I felt something was off but wanted to give the universe a chance to prove me wrong.

I breezed through the stages of grief in 5 seconds flat. Shock, denial, guilt, pain, bargaining and then I landed on anger.

Anger was what drove me to pick up the tiny little details in our short-lived conversation. I latched on to every data point and clue and went on a rampage online to find their identity and location. I wanted them to pay! Yes, in all sense of that word.

While their number didn't have a name on their WhatsApp account, I could key it onto one of the biggest apps in Singapore, which had expanded its services to allow peer-to-peer payments. I keyed it in, held my breath and then I saw it...

A real name.

Sobering up for justice

I want to tell you that this story has the happy ending you want. That I got my money or my item back or that they somehow got sweet justice served to them. None of those things happened.

What did happen was that my anger leapt over depression and landed on acceptance. It's not that I didn't want a happy ending for myself too. It's that I got a sobering reminder that even in the hands of relatively good people like myself, I could have used private information against someone. Yes, even if they deserve it.

That's when I realised that in our fight for privacy, it's never just about protecting the good ones from the bad ones. Because we're a little bit of both and, given enough fuel to anger, it could have easily been used irresponsibly. Privacy then becomes much more than just protection from others, but also protection from ourselves.