How to protect your online privacy: Threats and solutions

Online Privacy

Online privacy has come under the spotlight recently, and rightly so. With so many data breaches taking places lately, we cannot just depend on the corporations to protect our data. We, as citizens, need to be aware of the security risks online and know how to minimize them and keep ourselves safe.

With the latest case of Cambridge Analytica that used data from 50 million Facebook users and was influential in the 2016 Presidential elections, the glaring thought of having your private information stolen has to come into the mainstream limelight. We, as regular people, hardly ever think about our photos and posts on social media as private information. We think we do not have anything valuable possession nor are famous enough to be hacked. While that may be the case when it comes to high profile black hat hackers, studies have shown that there are more number of privacy and identity theft incidences for normal people, several of which remain unreported.

What can you do?

When it comes to online data that is stored in the company’s servers, there is not much you can do. But it is up to you to decide what kind of data goes into the hands of these mega corporations. The less data they have, the fewer chances of your data getting compromised.

Facebook

Your public profile on Facebook, Instagram could be used in an identity theft case where people’s faces are morphed on to other bodies. We play hundreds of games on Facebook, take several quizzes using our Facebook account.. But do we really know what happens to that information after we are done? When you gave that quiz game or that app permissions to access your complete Facebook profile and your files and folders on your phones, chances are that it still has access to them even after you have stopped playing with them.

To check what apps your Facebook profile is connected with, follow the steps below:

1. Open Facebook, go to the top right of the screen and click on the downward pointing arrow next to the ‘?’button
2. In the dropdown menu, select Settings
3. On the menu on the left, select ‘Apps’
4. Wait for a few seconds for it to load. These are all the apps that Facebook gives your information too. You would be surprised to see the number of apps that show up, several of which you would not even have remember signing up.
5. If there is an app in the list which you no longer use and is appearing in the list, either edit the privacy settings or remove the app completely using the X button.

These apps had access to your complete Facebook profile. If their servers were compromised, an attacker would have access to your complete profile (even if it is private).

Mobile applications

Mobile applications, though greatly increased our convenience, have also raised questions marks on the online privacy of their customers from time to time.

Whenever you download an app from the Google Play Store, the app asks you for permission before installing. This screen is very important and should not be neglected. Google has introduced a new feature in which apps that are downloaded in Android version 7.0 and above would not ask for permission at the time of install. They would be asked individually. So you may only the above screen when you are using the app.

So when you see the above message for an app that you feel requires the camera (like Instagram or any other camera app) you can select ‘Allow’. If it is an regular app like a game, you should select ‘Deny’.

Protect yourself from phishing

In the past few decades, there has been an enormous amount of data generated for each individual. This is usually owing to us being active on all social media platforms. This results in our email, phone number being spread out pretty easily. Attackers can use that email and target you (based on your interest on your social media profile) and try to get you to sent them money. This is called phishing and is a big tool for attackers to threaten our online privacy. We should be aware of it and not fall prey to it. I have covered phishing and how to be safe from it in a previous article. Please check it out here. 

Check for rogue processes in Task Manager

Windows computers are more vulnerable to malware and viruses than MACs or Linux machines. You can check if your computer is running a malware or not by following the steps below:

Press Ctrl+Shift+Esc to open Task Manager on Windows. Check for any unknown processes under the Process tab. If you want to know what each process does, you can use the Process library. It is a regularly updated database of all the Windows processes including known malware that could be hosting them. Malware could be impersonating a legitimate application and thus, you need to be extra careful to weed them out.

So, to conclude, you need to be aware of who you give permission to your data. Most of us feel that our data is not significant enough to be made use of. But this is the same data that is sold easily on the dark web for $5.20 per account. Attackers can make use of this data to know our preferences and launch a social engineering attack (phishing) and fool us into giving them information. They could also use our preference to run targeted ads for us to see.

We need to be careful about our online footprint and should be aware of the consequences of personal data leaks. Remember, your data is not worthless and can be used nefariously against you.