What about online privacy? Have you ever wondered if your personal information is in criminal hands? If you have an active digital life, chances are your info is in places you don’t even know about due to cyberattacks happening more often than you’d expect. Your email account, files, full name, and even passwords are at risk every time you engage with anything connected to external resources.
Think about this for a sec: You’ve got a Google account with your name, birthdate, and even credit card info saved in Chrome’s password manager. And it’s not just Google – you’ve also got important stuff in your iCloud and Microsoft accounts, like photos, chats, and files. All these companies have a huge cybersecurity reputation to take care of and they do it pretty well, but what about privacy? Is it the same? What about companies that use your information to feed their marketing algorithms like Meta, Amazon, Google, or X?
First, we have to know that privacy and Cybersecurity are not the same thing. According to IBM: «Cybersecurity refers to any technologies, practices, and policies for preventing cyberattacks or mitigating their impact.» This company also says that: «Data privacy, also called «information privacy,» is the principle that a person should have control over their personal data, including the ability to decide how organizations collect, store and use their data.»
So we can argue that these two terms are not the same, but how can a weak cybersecurity system and the absence of good privacy practices affect us? The answer is simple, it can enormously affect us. Let’s put an example to put this in context: Imagine you have a bank account that contains all your savings, let’s say that this bank doesn’t have good privacy policies, and as nobody reads the little words in contracts, this bank is selling your information for marketing purposes so other companies can benefit from your data offering you their products, but there is a problem, you don’t know what companies are and each of them has different privacy policies, so now your information is somewhere else and you don’t have complete control of this. On top of that, this bank gets hacked, and now your information and probably your savings are in criminal hands which is a much worse scenario.
So, it all boils down to a simple question: how can we stop these kinds of things from happening? First off, we have to remember that there are lots of things we can’t control, like the privacy regulations in different countries or how good a company’s cybersecurity team is. That’s why we have to focus our attention and efforts on the things we can control.
There are many ways we can protect ourselves and valuable assets. These are the most important ones:
- Take care of your passwords: Change your most important passwords regularly and use password managers like Nordpass and 1Password to help you keep them safe.
- Enable the Two-factor authentication: This method also known as «2FA» allows you to add an extra layer of security to your accounts, authenticator apps like the ones from Microsoft and Google are a great way to utilize this method.
- Read the little words: Be careful with the services and products you sign in, lots of them don’t take care of your information as it should be, so you have to be aware of what is behind every service, game, and digital product you use.
- Watch the trackers and Cookies: There are lots of trackers following you around the web every time you interact with the internet in many ways, so avoid accepting cookies for marketing purposes, use a safe browser like Brave and Safari, and I recommend installing a plugin called privacy badger, that do all the dirty work for you.
- Use masked emails: Sometimes we need to access a not-so-trusty web page, in those cases, you can use a masked email that will hide your important information from possible malicious databases. Services like Google, iCloud, and Proton Mail can help you with that.
- Keep your information private: Be careful with the configuration of certain apps like Instagram, probably some of your information is public and you don’t know it.
- Watch your connections: Don’t forget to turn your wifi connection off when you walk on the street and your Bluetooth connection when you’re not using it, and avoid using public Wifi.
- Watch what permissions you grant: The apps we install on our phones, ask for permissions that seem to make no sense, like a voice recording app that wants access to your location. So be careful and check what your apps are doing behind your back.
- Watch what you share: Be careful with what you share online, you don’t know where this information may end, and this can be a very useful tool for people who want to commit cyber crimes.
- If you have a company, build a healthy and preventive online culture: This is very important because attacks can occur from outside or inside the organization, and having a well-informed workforce, as well as a good cybersecurity system implemented is key.
In today’s world, we rely heavily on products and services from various companies. However, it’s tough to keep our information private and secure when our data is the most valuable asset in this world and every organization wants to have it. Some companies even make a business out of collecting, processing, and selling our data from data centers.
There are many more ways we can take care of our data, if you want to be more meticulous, you can always investigate and reduce the probability of your data being leaked.
Finally, remember that there is no impenetrable system in this world, so take care of your online life, and keep in mind that your most valuable assets are there.
