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Maintaining Digital Privacy in the Age of Mobile Devices
Staying safe in the digital age is more important than ever. Here’s what you should know about keeping your private life private online on all your devices.
Even though the digital revolution is well underway, privacy remains a major concern for everyone from the casual user to multinational corporations. As social media becomes the de facto means of communication and users are trending toward using mobile devices more than their traditional counterparts, but some things never change, such as the desire to preserve digital privacy to reduce the chances of being targeted by cybercriminals.
Brian Loughlin of Intelice Solutions shares what you need to know about playing it safe in 2020.
One of the biggest privacy pitfalls occurs as the result of being too careless with personal information on social media. You may think that only friends and family have access to your personal pages, but cybercriminals have eyes everywhere, and they’ve learned a few tricks of the trade designed to gain access to your financial information. For example, many people use their pet’s names, high school mascot, or children’s names as passwords for bank and credit card accounts.
The reason for using the aforementioned passwords is that they’re easy for users to remember. However, phrases are also easy to remember, and they’re almost impossible for cybercriminals to figure out unless it’s a phrase that you’re well-known for using — in that case, choose something else.
Although public storage services such as Dropbox and Google Drive offer the ultimate convenience, avoid using them to store scans of personal identification or lists of passwords. If you have no other choice but use these options for storing sensitive information or documents, be sure to enable two-factor authentication. Step off the Beaten Search Engine Path
Most people automatically head for Google when it comes to browsing the internet, Google collects and stores information every time you use it. When the occasion calls for optimal privacy, use an alternative search engine such as DuckDuckGo that doesn’t track, store, and share your search history.
Another alternative when you’d like an added measure of privacy while browsing the internet is to use incognito mode. This ensures that your activity won’t be tracked. The steps involved in enabling incognito mode vary per individual browser.
Even though it’s much more difficult in 2020 than it has been in the past for cyber attackers to access private data, public Wi-Fi remains one of the major culprits when it comes to digital violations of privacy. Always err on the side of caution when you’re at a coffee shop or other location with public Wi-Fi and need to check your credit card or banking details and use your data plan or a secure hotspot instead.
Mobile device usage has skyrocketed in recent years, with many people spending more time on them than on their laptops or desktop computers. However, many people don’t exercise the same degree of caution with phones as they do with other devices. Passcoding your phone is a good first line of defense in the event that the device is lost or stolen. It’s also important to use anti-virus software on all devices, including phones and tablets.
Please feel free to reach out to us at your convenience for more information about preserving your digital privacy in 2020.
