Whether utilizing resources, working on your own projects, shopping around or just having fun, you probably dedicate a substantial amount of time to the Internet. But by having so much of a presence on a medium designed to be accessible to anyone, there are always risks, especially with cyber crime steadily rising. Based on the time you have to follow through, here are a few strategies for online privacy and security.
Protecting Sensitive Information
In 5 Minutes: Install “HTTPS Everywhere” — You should never enter credit card info, personal details or other data anywhere not encrypted through the security protocol HTTPS. Check that an address begins with https:// and click the adjacent lock symbol to verify the site. However, HTTPS isn’t used by every website, and many don’t use it correctly, so a valuable step in protecting yourself is to install the browser extension HTTPS Everywhere, so every request your computer sends to websites will be properly encrypted.
In 15 Minutes: Change Your Settings — Disable automatic connection to open Wi-Fi networks, and restrict location data sharing to applications you really need it for. On a laptop, restrict file sharing to devices you know, enable your computer’s firewall on all public networks and turn off network discovery—you can make these settings automatic in the Advanced Sharing menu on Windows, and on Mac you can download the free app ControlPlane for similar automation. Enable automatic updates, so you’ll always have current security fixes.
In 2 Hours: Update Your Habits — Use one browser for sensitive activities like shopping and accessing your bank account, and another browser for everything else. Change your passwords to strings of several unrelated words, the most secure method of password construction. Regularly back up all your files to an external hard drive or cloud storage. If you want a final measure of confidence, many banks allow you to create temporary credit card numbers for which you can set expiration dates and charge limits.
Keeping Your Activity Private
In 5 Minutes: Install Privacy Badger — If you want to keep your web usage out of the hands of advertisers and other third parties, Privacy Badger is an extension that automatically blocks anything recording your activity unannounced. It only blocks entities that don’t respect the Do Not Track messages it sends them and that haven’t qualified for a list of the services necessary to browse the web, so it doesn’t hide everything you do and it isn’t a universal adblock. It is still a convenient and reasonable approach to privacy.
In 15 Minutes: Start Using 10-Minute Mail and 2FA — To prevent the sites you sign up for storing your contact information and potentially selling it to advertisers, 10-Minute Mail is a website that provides you with a totally functional email address you can use before it self-destructs in 10 minutes, keeping your real inbox clean. While its effectiveness varies, you may also want to use two-factor authentication where it is offered, which requires you to supplement a password with a piece of information only you have.
In 2 Hours: Get a VPN — A Virtual Private Network, or VPN, is one of the most powerful tools for those interested in obscuring 100 percent of their web traffic from outside observers. If you do want to use a VPN, you will need to do your own research—they come with different costs and different levels of reliability, with free VPNs usually untrustworthy. Still, if you’re interested in something safer than The Onion Router and more convenient than your own virtual machine, a VPN can be worth the investment.
– By Colin Battis
