After reading this week’s material I realized there is a plethora of ways you can have your identity stolen, your data sold, and that there is various precautions to help prevent it all. Having learned about Metadata from the ProPublica I feel less confident then I did going into this assignment. The article explains that metadata is necessary to make website servers or cellphone towers work but within that metadata is sensitive information about you or your whereabouts. So really, there is no way around metadata being obtained by companies unless you begin using SSL which basically means you use websites that only begin with “https” rather than “http”. Realistically, when I use the internet it is mostly for school purposes and if I find an article that has useful information and happens to begin with “http”, then I am using it. It is not worth it to me to take the extra time to only use “https” URL’s.
The second article that I decided to focus on was one by FCC. In this article was listed steps to protect your computer and cellphone from being hacked remotely through bluetooth and wifi connections. This one caught my attention in particular because the first warning sign on wifi usage was if an establishment has more than one wifi option, check to see which one is correct because the other is likely an imposter. However, I know that even at my work we have three different wifi’s customers can see but only one works. Therefor I have begun to question why the other two options were left there each time we got a new wifi IP. I haven’t tried it personally but maybe customers are connecting to one of the old ones on the right day at the right time and a hacker could be remotely accessing their information through it. This makes me want to shut my wifi off forever or rather only use my laptop in public spaces with my VPN turned on.
The last article I analyzed was one by The New York Times on “10 Tips to Avoid Leaving Tracks Around the Internet”. In this reading I learned that many of the social media sites and even search engines store cookies on our computers to then track us later by. I also learned how on Facebook I can limit what ads are targeted to me to prevent my data from being taken advantage of. This seems like a simple and easy way to improve some of my personal online security, but it doesn’t end there. The article goes on to say you should avoid using Google, Gmail, Google Maps, etc. all because they track you. If that is too difficult of a task, which for me it is, you can try to instead “jam google”. This means searching for random things occasionally to confuse the algorithms that help targeted sales or ads to you. The last and single most helpful thing The New York Times offered me was an ad blocker called Ghostery. This plug in is free, it blocks tracking, and it lists the websites trying to track you for you to see. This idea actually excited me to be able to see what servers are trying to track me and I plan to us it to my full advantage.
In a way, I already do take precaution with my online information. I use a PVN that I pay for yearly and I only use wifi networks I trust. I could however take more precaution by changing my privacy settings on my social medias and begin using an ad blocker to gain a better understanding of the severity of online tracking. Truthfully I think it all sounds scarier than it is but maybe that’s what we are led to believe.
