October 20, 2020 5 Easy Ways to Protect Your Digital Privacy

With an ever increasing need to protect your digital privacy here are 5 easy ways to do so.

Your digital privacy is not a given. In other words, if you don’t fight for your right, third parties will be more than happy to infringe upon it to further their own interests.

Examples include advertisers analyzing your interests to serve laser-focused ads, your local government trying to snoop into your activities to maintain control, and the list goes on.

As you can see, there is an ever-increasing need to protect your digital privacy. So keep on reading as we’re about to reveal 5 easy ways on how to protect it:

1. Enable Two-Factor Authentication

The fear of someone stealing your password right from underneath your nose is real. Whether it be through the use of keyloggers, brute-forcing your accounts, or looking over your shoulder, you’re in for some serious trouble if that’s the only thing that stands between them and your personal information. As luck would have it, two-factor authentication makes things quite a bit more troublesome for the bad guys.

In essence, by enabling it, an SMS containing a special one-time code gets sent to your smartphone at any time someone attempts to access one of your online accounts. So without being able to access your smartphone, the hacker’s attempts would be rendered in vain. This additional layer of protection does wonders for keeping your accounts safe. At the same time, you will stress less, knowing that your accounts are safe from harm to a reasonable degree.

At the very least, it makes sense to enable two-factor authentication on your most important accounts such as those of online banking and shopping activities, as well as your primary email account.

2. Install a Password Manager

Many people tend to make the mistake of using oversimplified passwords just for the sake of making them easier to remember. The problem with that is obvious: while you’re making it less of a burden on your memory, the hackers will also have an easier time brute-forcing their way through.

The good news is that a good password manager also comes with a password generator bundled right into it, thus effectively addressing the problem. This allows you to generate long and complex passwords that contain capital letters, numbers, and special symbols, all of which makes them tougher to crack. A great example of a password generator, which is also accessible for free, can be found here: https://nordpass.com/password-generator/

To summarize, they will do all the heavy lifting for you to focus on whatever you set out to do instead of worrying about security. By using one, you can forever kiss goodbye having to come up with your own passwords, nor will you have to remember them.

3. Make an Effort to Keep Your Devices up to Date

One of the easiest (and, at the same time, most often forgotten) ways to protect your digital privacy is to keep your devices up to date. The reason being is that as time goes on, various security vulnerabilities are found in operating systems. Leaving them unpatched is almost the same as inviting a would-be hacker to exploit them.

By installing updates regularly, you reduce the timeframe of being vulnerable to exploits. While true that your device will periodically remind you of available updates, it’s good to go beyond that and run the update manager on your device every once in a while. Before calling it a day at work or in the morning is as good a time as any. The more often, the better.

4. Freeze Your Credit

Whether you like it or not, data breaches are a fact of life. It can happen despite taking all the right measures to prevent them. So instead of worrying all the time, focus on what you control and perform a credit freeze. While such a freeze is in effect, third parties will be unable to scrutinize your credit history, which is a step toward protecting your privacy. The only problem is that vendors you’re interested in doing business with will also be unable to check it.

Once again, the solution is simple. Whenever a situation occurs like the one described above, all it takes to lift the freeze is to call up the major credit services and ask them to remove it for the time being. After that, you’re free to reinstate the freeze once again should you desire.

5. Make Your Devices Privacy-Oriented

There’s a lot you can do in terms of prioritizing privacy on the devices you’re using. For instance, you can opt to disable location tracking on your smartphone and use incognito mode in your browser. Then, you may want to consider uninstalling apps you don’t need. For example, why keep the Facebook app installed on your phone if you don’t even have a profile in the first place?

When installing a new app, consider its impact on your privacy. Does it ask for too many permissions that fall outside of what it was intended to do? Then give it a second thought.

Another good trick is to use a throwaway email account to sign up for services that aren’t important or only need to use once. Besides, it’s good practice to keep your personal affairs separate from your work-related matters.

Conclusion

These tips should be more than enough to make an impact on your digital privacy. Remember that anything you do online should take this important principle into account. And if you are asked to sacrifice it, make a judgment call on whether the reward outweighs the sacrifice at all.

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