Tag: privacy

How to Protect your privacy online

Paul

Privacy - Privacy Online

Online Data

52 percent of respondents shared personally identifying information through social media sites.  — Dan Raffer

Do you know how much of your personal data is out there? There are many people who will not know just how much data is available on the internet. You could literally find information about a person where they live, their phone number and even their email address if you really know where to go to search for this information. No I am not joking, it is really not hard to find this information and that is what most people just don’t realize.   As you might think, most people are leaking their information in many ways from their hair color to their favorite food on social media sites and this just as dangerous as you might not realize.

Hearing what I just told you, how do you feel about it?

“Most browsers — including Chrome, Firefox and Safari — offer some sort of private browsing window.” Christian Stewart

You can protect your privacy somewhat by using this private browser such as Chrome’s Incognito window but this is only the first step to protect your privacy online. You should also disable third party cookies and also use a good privacy focused search engines such as duckduckgo (duckduckgo.com), or Wolframalpha (wolframalpha.com) to help keep people from tracking you. These are all good and will help you not be tracked as much on the internet and keep your privacy safe.

Be skeptical

More than 99 percent of threats observed required human interaction to execute. – Gamelearn

Did you know that it could be as simple as being very skeptical of any links you have been sent or browsing on the web. Not every link on the internet is safe for us to click. So How do you know if it is safe to click? These are good questions that need to really be thought out before you click any link you want. Some of the common questions I ask myself are:

  • Did I receive this link without being told?

  • Was it a popup message or something like that?

  • Do I know the person who sent it?

  • Is the URL link hidden from my site?

  • Was it sent on a Social Media site?

If you answered yes to at least one of these questions you should be very cautious to click the link. Most of the time if you received a message saying your system is infected you would be quick to click that link but that would be the wrong. Most virus authors will pray on your emotions and social engineer the attacks that will get them the most results.

Stop with the easy passwords

This is the most valuable tip I can give you, everyone who’s anyone will not create complex passwords because we aren’t complex. Humans especially when it comes to passwords will not create a really hard password because it will be hard for them to remember it. Definitely don’t write down your passwords for others to see. You’ve seen shows or movies like Ready Player One. If you seen the movie Ready Player One, in the movie Sorrento leaves his password on the rig and well you know the rest but it makes a great point that there are better ways to keep your passwords safe. I recommend using a password vault or a password manager that will do the job. I currently use Lastpass for all my needs but I am sure there are other free password managers that will create, encrypt, and even save those passwords for the next time you visit a website. Any good password manager is really going to be better at create a unique password than you would.

Use 2 factor authentication

It’s time to use 2 factor authentication. It is something you have and not something you know, you should make it extremely hard for any key-logger or other such methods from controlling your account. This is where 2 factor authentication comes into play, they might know your password but they will also need to know or have a way to authenticate in other ways. So it is best to have this turned on even if you are using your cell phone, it will provide another layer of protection and will keep your accounts safe.

When it comes to privacy, it can be a big struggle just to keep your information safe. There are several ways you can keep it from those big baddies that want to use your information for piracy and identity theft. We can never really understand why but we can at least work hard at making sure our information isn’t in the wrong hands.

How Advertisers use your information on websites!

Paul

Free Image From PixabayImage By: Gerd Altmann

Advertising

When it comes to advertisements you probably don’t realize just how much data they are getting from you.  It can be as simple as what did you click and who did you go visit online.  We have seen advertisers keep databases of information about what people do and where they go on the web.   They use what we refer to as cookies, and I’m not talking something in a cookie jar but on the web.   They put a little bit of information on your system as you browse the web whether it be which sites you visit to which ads you clicked.   Advertisers are very specific and know what browser you are using to maybe even your age by which websites you are visiting.  Advertisers can even keep track of you by unique identifiers that your web browser broadcasts to sites even when you least expect it.  There isn’t much you can do about it other than preventing these cookies that they use when visiting websites because if you disable them, you probably wouldn’t have good experiences on the websites.   Most websites use cookies to remember who you are for login cookies and if you’d have to login constantly if you disabled cookies all the way.  They make browsing the web just a little better because we skip the repetitive nature of usernames and passwords.

Drive by Clicks

Having said all this about advertising , you’d probably wouldn’t expect them to use that to drive their ads towards a certain group of people.   This is why they collect this data so they can try to know who will want the ads that they are showing.   They don’t want to show ads to people who won’t click their products.  They will gather what they know about you and know which ads you are more likely to click and what ads you will most likely not click for example Facebook.   If we use Facebook as an example they will know way more than you would like them to know about you because they have an intimate relationship with you, after all you have to use their service to talk to friends and family and they know a lot about you from your race, religion, work, school, even marital status.      They can use this to drive traffic your way so they can get even more money from advertisers to show their ads and make money by showing ads in Facebook, you might not realise that.   They call them sponsor ads but they still show them to you in one way or another and thus, you are driving their business even more when you click on one of their ads.

Technology today

We really can’t do much to prevent our privacy from being gathered in today’s technological era due to the fact we use computers at work, school, and even home to buy and sell, or even browse the web.   It’s a real slippery slope when it comes to advertisements and what you would prefer them not to know about you.   We can try to hide our presence on the web but they will always come up with ways to figure out as much information as they to gather that data to be able to show those ads that you will more than likely click on to drive business to websites who want that income.   When it comes to this, we can only see that it is bound to get more invasive because advertisers want you to see their ads because they want to be able to make money off of you and maybe even make you a loyal customer.   We really don’t have any more privacy and their isn’t anything we can do about.

 

Not even Whatsapp is Private anymore!

Paul1 Reply
Photo by Pixabay from Pexels

Whatsapp and Privacy

I’ve been using whatsapp for 2 years now and never thought a thing about it.  Recently I have been logging into Whatsapp and seeing the Facebook logo on the start screen of it on my mobile device.  Facebook bought Whatsapp in February 2014 about 6 years ago.   So I didn’t know about this until recently when they decided to update the apps on Google Play.  We all thought Whatsapp was end to end encryption.   Then I had Facebook ads start showing stuff that I didn’t even talk about or say anything on the Fb messenger.   I won’t explain what as been showing up with it because I want to keep my life private but I will say it’s a little disconcerning.   There’s even a post from another blogger named Sk babu about this such problem.  Is our encrypted message being unencrypted by Facebook and bots and people reading our messages.  

Should I stop using Whatsapp?

This has been a sour point with me and keeping my conversations with friends private.   Many bloggers around the world are suggesting we stop using Whatsapp because Facebook will sooner or later embed content moderation into our conversations.   So how are they going to do that if it is encrypted.   Simple, they have the master key to all encrypted content.   WhatsApp even said some of this in their blog posting 2016.

But by coordinating more with Facebook, we’ll be able to do things like track basic metrics about how often people use our services and better fight spam on WhatsApp. And by connecting your phone number with Facebook’s systems, Facebook can offer better friend suggestions and show you more relevant ads if you have an account with them.

Metrics and Phone Numbers?

What metrics is Facebook and Whatsapp tracking?  I can imagine if it’s end to end encryption that they can track much.   If this is really being tracked then how are they doing this?  Why would I want to connect my phone number to Facebook, if I wanted to be a private about this with other such applications.   It is really concerning in my mind and thus I want to move from WhatsApp to another app.

3 Apps that Might be an alternative to Whatsapp

I’ve been searching Google play and I have come up with a list of apps that look promising and these are:

  • Threema —  I was drawn to this app because it has a ranged of security features such as Trusted Contacts, and Highest level of encryption.  I do see a small set back is that it cost money to buy the program.  So there is that but I like that it has a level of trust for people by verify there identity with a qr code.
  • Signal Private Messaging App —  This is an open sourced and uses Open Whisper Systems.   It is also free but there isn’t much way to verify someone on Signal but it is secure and you can keep private by routing your calls through the server to avoid your ip from showing.  I’ve tried and it looks promising.
  • Telegram — I’ve used telegram from gaming and other such activities and I am impressed with it but there is much to desired by it because you can’t verify anyone’s identity without your Telephone number.

These are three that I recommend and have used 2 out of the 3.  I might just buy Threema and check it out and tell you what I think.   Do you have a secure messaging app that you want to recommend.  Why not leave a comment and tell me your experiences on it!