Privacy: Protecting the keys to the castle

Posted on 5th May 2022

When I was a teenager my step-father and I got into a heated argument. Bad enough that I decided to go into my room and close the door. My step-father decided the argument wasn’t over and followed me. When I closed the door I laid on my bed, expecting to “cool down” from the argument. The next thing I know my step-father karate kicked the door handle, expecting it to just open, however, instead, the door went off the hinges! What happened next ended up making us both turn from yelling at each other to laughing… The door decided to be very dramatic. As it “leapt” from it’s hinges, the door stood on it’s own for a second, about an inch or so away from the doorframe. A second or two later, it began to fall to the floor. It was almost like a dramatic scene from a movie, where the hero takes a bullet and slowly falls to his knees for a second or two before face planting the ground. This left me without a door (and without my privacy) for several days before my step-father made the necessary repairs.

As humans, we thrive on being social creatures. Spending time with others of our kind, and even doing activities together. But eventually we come home, and expect privacy. Privacy gives us a sense of control. It allows us to have something that is “just for us” that others do not see. Privacy also serves another important function. It keeps others from knowing what we have. This can be important for protecting the things you want to keep private. If you were to put a fat stack of money in front of a window how long would it be before someone came to steal it? We instead, keep our money private from others. It’s important to do the same with our data and information.

Information is power and people know it. Keeping your data private, especially online is crucial. Some will say “Well, I have nothing to hide”. To that I would answer, yes you do. Do you post your social security number on Facebook? Would you tweet out your bank account number on Twitter? Would you take a picture of your credit card numbers, expiration date, and CVV code on Instagram? Likely your answer is “no” to all of the above. You have something to hide.
A lot of times people assume that privacy means from the government. And while it is true, that privacy from the government is important, it is also important to have privacy from nefarious characters online who would stop at nothing to steal your identity, take your credit card numbers, or remove all your money from your bank account, if given the chance.

So what are some things we can do to remain private? First, it’s important to realize what information you provide to others online. In most cases social media is a primary target for sharing private information. I’m not talking about the posts you make on the platform (although you should be careful what you do post), but the advertising platforms it uses. What most people do not realize is that when Facebook provides your personal information to ad providers, those ad providers receive a lot of information about you. Name, address, phone numbers, even your physical location from which you are accessing Facebook can be provided to these advertisement companies. Facebook will try to aggregate this data as much as possible and strip some private information from the data before passing it on, but it’s hard to really know how much they strip. Additionally your location data is most lucrative. Ad providers can target ads relevant to your physical location. The bigger concern here, isn’t what the ad providers can do with that location data but who else they may sell that data to or who may gain access to it. How are you to know if those being sold such data are trustworthy or not. What happens if they are hacked? Even if your location data is anonymized it’s easy for someone to figure out who you are, especially if you go home every night.

Other things you can do is turn location tracking off on your devices. Most phones these days have an option to turn location services off. Do not give apps permission to access your location. For apps where you need to share your location (and be mindful and ask yourself, why does this app actually need my location?) be sure to choose “only this time” when asked if you want to share your location with the app. Most apps will work normally if you deny access to your location however. You can always manually type in a location that is not precise to your location and still use the app. (my weather app for example doesn’t need to know exactly where my house is, only the zip code I live in—Although, I generally just go outside to figure out the weather. It’s more private that way). Be mindful of what you install on your phone too. Apps are very good at hiding their intentions from Google and Apple’s app review teams. There are several news articles over the years about apps finding their way into the app store and play store only to launch data theft attacks on the device later.

One of the best recommendations I can provide to you is use FOSS-based software on your computers and phones. FOSS, Free Open-Source Software, are usually more private and protect your data better because their source code is open for everyone to see. People can read the code and determine if there is something fishy going on. Usually they will report it if they find something. So read up on the FOSS software before you download and use it.
There are other ways to protect your privacy but we will stop there for now.