With the increasing reliance on technology to facilitate our work, convenience, and entertainment needs, we have exposed our personal information and sensitive data to various platforms monitoring and tracking our activities.
The more digital the world becomes, the more privacy becomes a concern.
There is no denying that technology is an integral part of our lives today, but so is privacy, and protecting it is the right of every individual. By making simple changes to your browsers, accounts, and devices, you can protect your privacy and prevent third-party sources from attempting to access your data.
The following guide will help you secure your personal information and protect it from being constantly accessed online.
6 Ways You Can Protect Your Digital Privacy
1. Secure Accounts
Passwords leaks and data breaches have caused damage to many companies, including big names like Yahoo and Facebook. Strong passwords are the first step to securing accounts and preventing access to hackers to your personal information.
Long passphrases are critical to your privacy and must be unique for all accounts and sites. Experts recommend avoiding common combinations such as 123 and 000. Passwords should be random and enriched with special characters.
It is always recommended to avoid using the same password for your email and the accounts associated with that email address. You can protect other accounts if one is compromised.
Two-factor authentication is an important tool to add an extra layer of security to your accounts. It connects your mobile number to your email address and notifies you if an unknown browser is trying to access your account.
2. Protect Your Browser
It is common knowledge that applications and websites track all our activities in a digitally-driven world. Search for a pair of jeans online, and your social media will fill up with denim advertisements.
Websites collect your browsing habits, social media details, preferences, and information about your location to personalize media for you. This is one of the most ground-breaking innovations of the Internet.
However, exposing your information and browsing activities can also be damaging to your privacy and cybersecurity. Intelligent browser extensions like Guardio Security prevent websites from collecting data and block ads.
The web browser extension also protects your browser from being hijacked or infected with malware. Guardio sends you automatic alerts when your information is leaked or shared by third-party networks to protect your privacy.
3. Update Your Security System
How often do we ignore the nudges about outdated software solutions and security updates? Quite many times. But updating your system and installing the latest security updates is crucial to prevent your privacy from being compromised.
Security updates are a public declaration by the company that threats were found and fixed. By avoiding updates, you are exposing your system to the same threat the engineers worked hard to prevent your data from being compromised.
4. Beware of Phishing
Digital privacy and protection not only include keeping hackers and malware at bay but also preventing bad actors from accessing our passwords and personal information. Attempts to gain access to your personal information can be made through a phone call, email, or text messages. Recently, Facebook parent company Meta has faced a $3.2 billion lawsuit for exploiting user data.
Phishing scams are becoming increasingly common and highly valuable for cyberattacks. Every year, thousands of online users fall victim to phishing scams. Fortunately, by learning how to identify phishing scams, you can prevent them from happening.
Phishing scams are often tempting emails from unknown accounts and messages that redirect you to strange websites. Avoid clicking on links you have received through unknown sources and immediately blocking related websites and numbers.
5. Use Encrypted Apps
To protect the content of your messages, install only those apps that provide end-to-end encryption. End-to-end encryption means the application company will not be able to access your messages.
However, applications with end-to-end encryption may protect your messages but not the metadata. Metadata can provide a lot of essential information about your activities. Similarly, messages backed up on cloud storage are no longer encrypted.
6. Block Add Personalization
Turning off ad personalization prevents companies from accessing and tracking your account activities. Invasive tracking is a result of ad personalization that most of us unconsciously accept when we install various applications. Ad personalization also prevents applications from sharing your information and preferences.
