I had always been somewhat aware of my information being taken and sold. I have been hacked a few times too, so I knew there were dangers when it comes to anything on the internet.
I’ve never really done anything to protect myself from any of this kind of stuff. I never touched my privacy settings, rarely changed my passwords, things like that. This weeks reading really opened my eyes. I learned a lot in terms of how to protect myself online as well as what it is exactly that I’m protecting myself from.
I definitely agree with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella when he says “we will regret sacrificing privacy for national security.” Everyone wants privacy and security, and we deserve that. We should not have to sacrifice that. Sure, there will be exceptions to that, but overall we should not have to sacrifice privacy just to be safe.
I often joke that I cannot say certain things online or over text, because I do not want to be spied on by the government. However, I’m not actually joking. We should not have to make sure every single word we ever post online is safe to use. I came across this article during our reading, and some of the words on the list are ridiculous.
We are not just sacrificing privacy for national security, we’re sacrificing so much more. We cannot say or do things that we want, or the government is right there behind us.
I know I will definitely be making some changes to the way I use the internet, and how I protect myself. One of the first things I will be doing is changing my password to everything, my particularly my emails.
This list also has some good advice that I will be following. Some of those I already have, like anti-virus software, and having a secure phone pin. However things like using a VPN and a password manager are things I am going to look into using.
I have always been a little wary of using password managers, because isn’t that just giving someone an incredibly easy way of getting all my passwords? But our reading from this week gave me a better insight to password managers as well as good ones to use.
The New York Times also put out a good list of ways to not leave traces on the internet. They mentioned ProtonMail, which I have seen a few times and it is something I am looking in to. Changing my email just seems like such a hassle, so we’ll see how that one goes.
I will also start to use DuckDuckGo rather than Google, because what I’ve learned the most from this weeks reading is that Google is seriously tracking us, in every way possible.
Overall, I just want to be able to enjoy my time online. I do not want to worry about who is tracking me, or getting my information. All of these tips and changes will help me feel safer and better about using the internet.
