Love posting about the fast-food you just ate? Well, who does not? In this digital era, we are rigorously surrounded by many social media applications and software such as Google and Facebook. And the consistent usage serves as the function of surveillance for these discussed platforms that we (active users) often overlook.
Ever wondered you just met someone in a café while taking your regular cup of coffee and in the next moment, you are seeing that person’s face on Facebook or Instagram. Or why the similar restaurants offering your favorite cuisines keep on appearing in the ads? Is this some kind of dark sorcery? The cumulative answer to these addressed questions is the digital surveillance age. These ads whether relevant or irrelevant are one of the main sources of income for these technology giants. Peeking into our private lives is continuously earning them (social media platforms) millions of dollars yearly.
Privacy has always been the hot topic under discussion since the introduction of Facebook and Google into our lives. It is simple human psychology that we never compromise on privacy whether intentionally or unintentionally. However, living in the current digital era, we are under constant surveillance. On the outside, we may pardon this privacy issue but deep down, each one of us is frightened to the core. We may never escape this social realm, but there are some techniques by which we can minimize the harmful and privacy disturbing interaction. This article elaborates on 5 privacy tips that can be utilized to guard privacy.
Switching to the Virtual Private Network
The unstable and unencrypted network assists hackers and attracts certain viruses and online malware. While surfing on an unencrypted network, we directly jump into the online world without any protection. The worldwide web is crowded with all kinds of people, some of who are on the constant hunt for such unencrypted network users. Unintentionally, we fell prey to such hackers and lose all of our private data.
To overcome the data loss, it is among practice to switch to Virtual Private Networks (VPNs). VPNs secure the network by encrypting it with several untraceable and undetectable layers that cause difficulties to cybercriminals. All in all, VPNs make your online presence very much private to the others available on the worldwide web. Therefore, by protecting your data with a VPN, we may escape or counter the possibilities of cybercrimes.
Understanding the role of cookies
Cookies are the primitive source of storing online data including private user credentials such as site visits and passwords. We often encounter a small popup at the bottom of our browsing screen while visiting many social or other websites. The popup asks the user whether to accept all cookies or not. By accepting, we provide access and permission to the website to store our activity and credentials.
Rejecting the requests hinders the available developers and website owners to store our data. To some extent, cookies are good practice as they eliminate the need for entering the data again and again. Therefore, it is best to reject the cookies request to unidentified websites that are not using a secure web address.
Protecting the private numbers and emails
What’s the reward that you get from sharing your private cellular number or emails without hesitation to the websites or social media platforms. Neglecting any surprised productivity from this activity, you only get hundreds of spam emails and calls. And if you turn towards neglecting these, you often overlook the important and personal messages.
It is in the best practices to protect the private numbers and emails from various internet services. And if you are deep into this immediate sharing habit of private credentials, create an additional email or buy an additional sim for such purposes.
Using two-factor authentication wherever possible
The normal protection layer at the regular signing-in or signing-up process doesn’t provide the extra protection against hackers. Anyone can simply copy your credentials from the recent activity and use it to steal your identity.
Using a two-factor authentication process adds an extra protective layer to the standard signing in process. Many social media websites offer this feature. It simply utilizes another device for identity confirmation. If the person lacks the certain device provided at the signup process, he may never access his account.
Staying away from public Wi-Fi networks
Public networks are flooded with viruses and malware. It is since such networks do not have any encryption or protection. Anyone can access such networks within a provided range.
The best practice is to stay away from such networks and to use private cellular networks wherever possible.
The bottom line:
Following these provided tips, we can guard our private information and protect the login-in credentials from all kinds of hackers. Living in such a digital era, it is not possible to permanently hide your identity from various online social platforms and websites, but what’s to lose in trying.