It didn't turn out like that. I became really depressed and with professional help, I admitted that I might need a job. Probably part time as I am fairly lazy and hate working.
The problem is that all the type of work I am sort of interested in require some administrative work like a company setup or new bank accounts. I have declined all these things because I feel the risk of getting my identity stolen, and therefore my brokerage accounts emptied, is now the only thing I should rationally be concerned about. The extra money from the job would have a negligible effect on my lifestyle (I am actually fairly frugal, and don't really buy much).
I have become very careful about not sharing my passport with anyone, including financial institutions.
I realize that my care to not get my identity stolen is on the extreme, compared to the average. However, everything I read everywhere tells me that not even big institutions are safe, so how could I trust my local accountant, or local financial institution to not get my data stolen?
Also, anytime I get on a plane, I have to share my passport, which I fully trust is entered on a poorly secured database, probably running windows XP servers SP 1, or something similarly cutting edge.
So should I actually start sharing my personal data more widely? All official advice is basically to not share personal data with untrusted sources, but from my perspective there are no trusted sources in our current age. The FBI, the government are all getting hacked. No institution can protect itself against hacking. So I do not even know what to make of this. Does anyone in the great HN community have a proper understanding of the risks of sharing one's personal data, and could enlighten me?
Every time you share your personal data there is risk as you have described, but the long tail of risks can be mitigated by stuff like 2fa at your brokerage accounts, frozen credit score, etc.
No institution can protect itself from hacking -> your info is already out there all you need to do is harden your brokerage accounts.
But overall it sounds like you should take reasonable precautions and then 'forget about it' and carry on with your life. At the moment, it seems like instead of the wealth giving you freedom and security, it is instead restricting you and filling you with stress and anxiety.
The nice thing about the traditional financial system is that when things go wrong, there's usually a way to make things right, even if it takes time (which you seem to have). Read your statements (I like paper statements because they arrive and remind me to read them; others don't because they could be intercepted).
If you are setting up a company, then you would tend to give your clients the company tax id, and not your own, which might help ease concerns about identity theft?
All data will eventually be leaked I guess. Not trying to sound scary, I genuinely believe that most data anyone collects about anyone else will end up in the wrong hands (if it's not in the wrong hands to begin with).
1) Use a service like JoinDeleteMe to have your name removed from public searchable databases. https://tinyurl.com/DeleteMePermanently That link will take 20% off your order.
2) Use a service like https://simpleoptout.com/ to opt-out of sites and services you personally use that DeleteMe doesn't cover.
3) Now that credit freezing is free, freeze all your credit reports. Brian Krebs has a good article on doing this: https://krebsonsecurity.com/2018/09/credit-freezes-are-free-...
4) Read JJ Luna's "How to Be Invisible: Protect Your Home, Your Children, Your Assets, and Your Life 3rd Edition" https://amzn.to/3qxkTWV He also has a website where you can register "ghost" addresses and LLCs that you can use to register your car title too and other financial assets to so they will be protected in case of a lawsuit or anything as they will not be able to identify you. https://www.jjluna.com/
5) Turn on 2FA for EVERYHING https://2fa.directory/
6) I created a list of anti-fingerprinting/security/privacy extensions I personally use: https://bitbin.it/ppcd0UpZ/
7) Get a VPN. I recommend https://tinyurl.com/WindScribe321 - they give you 10GB free a month, but it's only $4/mo if you pay for a year and you get access to unlimited devices, so you can have a VPN on your PC, phone, and any other devices you use. They have been vetted by Torrentfreak and keep no logs and do not give information to law enforcement: https://torrentfreak.com/best-vpn-anonymous-no-logging/#wind...
There's probably countless other things you could do, it just depends on how paranoid you are and how deep down the OpSec rabbit hole you want to go where it becomes an issue of convivence vs. constant security for everything you do.
Hope that helps.
pogue