Protect Yourself Online
In an article published by Electronic Frontier Foundation, they outline twelve basic steps to take to begin your venture into a worry free online experience.
It all starts by keeping personal information to yourself. Simply the way you have your preferred browser configured can be leaking or "shedding" some personal details such as email addresses or other information you wouldn't readily give away to those you don't know.
The next step to make things a little harder for malicious software of people to get a hold of your info is to understand that some "cookies" are helpful and others are used for the sole purpose of tracking your internet activity, from what pages you visit to what ads or links you click. This is usually done for marketing, but can easily be turned against you.
Step 3) Keep a "clean" email address. Basically, have a throwaway account that you use to sign up for sites or use in more public places, and make sure it can't be tracked back to you. It will basically act as a spam bullet shield, keeping all the garbage away from your important account and it can easily be deleted or forgotten.
Step 4) Similar to step 1, don't give out personal details to strangers or just-met "friends." This seems pretty easy. You wouldn't walk around a busy city with your name, address, and cell phone number written on a sign, so why do that online?
Step 5) Your place of employment probably monitors your internet access, watch what emails you reply to. If you remember the whole Mike Waite fiasco, thats basically what this is talking about.
Step 6) Beware of sites that offer rewards for contact info. This is pretty basic knowledge, just don't give out your information in exchange for discounted goods or services. Is your information being sold really worth that two year subscription to sports illustrated for 40% off?
Step 7) Don't reply to spammers, ever. Again, pretty common knowledge. Don't respond to any unsolicited bulk emails, and never take them up on whatever offer they're trying to sell. The Nigerian prince that needs a few thousand and promises a few billion in return, he's not real, and you sure as hell didn't win the Australian Lottery because you can't win if you don't play.
Step 8) Be conscious of web security. If you don't know what https:// is yet and you've never seen the little lock icon, you might be a little behind the times. Do some research and make sure you don't have any possibility of compromising your credit/debit info.
Step 9) Be conscious of home computer security.
Step 10) Examine privacy policies and seals
Step 11) Remember YOU decide what info is revealed, when, why, and to whom
Step 12) Use Encryption! Now we get into the stuff I'm most interested in. As the article says, there are more than just simple threats to privacy. There are threats of industrial espionage, government surveillance, identity theft, disgruntled former, and system crackers. PGP or Pretty Good Privacy is the easiest way to encrypt plain text. So for example, a message between two people would begin by exchanging a public key, the sender would write the message in plain text and use the public key to encrypt it, they would then send it to the intended recipient, who is the only person that has the private key or cipher. The recipient can decrypt the message and read the plain text. If someone else came across the encrypted message, it would look something like this. By the way, if you can figure out what message I encrypted, I'll gladly give up $20.
There's so much more I could talk about in terms of staying hidden online and I can even segue into real world use, but that pushes the limits on aspects that should be covered in an academic setting, as much of it is used to create new lives or used within circles of unsavory people and online black markets such as Agora (which can only be used over Tor and need a referral to sign up)
Good luck with your online anonymity - stay safe out there.
No comments:
Post a Comment