A letter to my best friend, Madlon,
I thought it was important to use this blog post as an opportunity to share the importance of personal privacy and online security.
“Before you can define privacy, you first have to define its opposite number: what’s public. Merriam-Webster’s first definition of “public” includes two different descriptions that are somewhat contradictory. The first is “exposed to general view: open” and the second is “well-known; prominent”. (Medium).
First, who are some of the entities who want your information? One sinister answer is data brokers. “Data brokers are entities that collect information about consumers, and then sell that data (or analytic scores, or classifications made based on that data) to other data brokers, companies, and/or individuals. These data brokers do not have a direct relationship with the people they’re collecting data on, so most people aren’t even aware that the data is even being collected.” (Vice).
These data brokers collect your information from sources that you likely would not suspect at first. For instance, “data brokers also collect information from social media sites, web browsing activity, quiz apps, media reports, websites, and other publicly available sources. And, of course, they also exchange or purchase information from one another, and then merge the data with their own records.” (Vice).
I want to share some tips that might help you protect your virtual data. PC Mag had a page of 12 easy things that you can do to become more secure online. They suggested to: install an antivirus software and keep It updated, explore the security tools that you install, use unique passwords for every login (I suggest using a password manager), get a VPN (and use it), use multi-factor authentication, use passcodes even when they are optional, pay with your smartphone whenever possible (here’s a list of some great sources for mobile payments), use different email addresses for different kinds of accounts, clear your cache, turn off the ‘save password’ feature in browsers, don’t fall prey to click bait or phishing scams, and protect your social media privacy.
These are all some great steps in protecting your online privacy.
A fantastically relevant quote by Edward Snowden that I want to leave you with is this: “ultimately, arguing that you don’t care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don’t care about free speech because you have nothing to say.”
Stay safe out there,
Alisha
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