How to Protect Yourself Against Online Spying
Privacy is important when you want it. Here are some steps you can take to keep yourself safe from prying eyes on the web.
Today we’re going to be conspiracy theorists.
Shh! Don’t tell anyone, but the National Security Agency has been collecting cell phone data on millions of Americans without having warrants.
Privacy is Important
When I first heard this, I thought, “I have nothing to hide, so why should I care about online privacy?” Then I realized my idea of “nothing to hide” and someone else’s may be very different. Oreo ice cream cake? Nothing to be ashamed of. But when someone broadcasts a picture of my Oreo ice cream cake on a blog in Tunisakstan, I could find myself on Tunisakstanian news as public enemy #1, if they’ve outlawed ice cream cake.
(I’m not joking, by the way. Something similar really happened. I’d give details but the Tunisakstanians would go after me next.)
But privacy isn’t just about breaking the law; privacy is a basic part of being human. I change my clothes in private because I don’t want people to see and become traumatized with jealousy at my manly-man body. Also, I’m horribly shy and have body issues. My therapist and I are working on it.
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I also want my medical records private. And discussions with my doctor. And accountant. And lawyer. And therapist. I know women who have had job offers withdrawn when they revealed they were pregnant. I know people who have been turned down for jobs because of medical conditions that made the employer nervous. Some data should not be public. Honestly, it’s just no one else’s business.
And besides, without privacy, I’ll start worrying more and more about what I say, even in social situations. No privacy has a chilling effect on free speech.
Privacy is important stuff. Let’s find out what to do about it.
Protection from the Government is Futile
The government is like a magical octopus that can squeeze anywhere. If they want to monitor you, they can, and there’s nothing you can do about it technically. But you can encrypt your communication so the teenager down the block with a surveillance kit she built out of an old hair dryer and piece of aluminum foil can’t eavesdrop.
See also: How to Maintain Your Privacy on the Web
Lesson #1 is to encrypt your wireless network. My colleague the Tech Talker has more on that in his episode How to Encrypt Your Files. Even then, always connect to sensitive web sites using SSL, Secure Sockets Layer. You know you’re using SSL when your browser is looking at a URL starting with https instead of http. This makes sure that even if a nefarious teenager is monitoring which sites you’re communicating with, they can’t see the data you’re sending.
Store Documents Encrypted
For those pesky times when your home gets ransacked and your hard drive is stolen, you don’t want your hard drive to be an open book. Encrypt that puppy! If you have Windows 7 or later, you can use the built-in “BitLocker” to encrypt your hard drive. If you have Mac OS X, you can use “File Vault 2” to encrypt your hard drive.
When you encrypt your hard drive, you’re the only one who can access it. But beware! A single disk error in the wrong part of your disk could make your entire drive unusable and non-recoverable. So make sure to back up regularly. Of course, make sure the backups are also encrypted.
See also: How to Encrypt Your Data
If you back up to the cloud, choose a backup service that encrypts files before sending them to the cloud. On the Mac, I use Arq from Haystack Software. It’s a bit tricky to set up, since you need to get an Amazon S3 account, but it’s worth the effort.
Don’t Tag Yourself in Photos
I know you want to. Once, Facebook had an option “don’t let people tag me in photos.” They changed it to, “don’t publish photos I’m tagged in on my timeline.” Why the change? I can think of only one explanation. I don’t know if it’s true, but since we’re in conspiracy-theory mode, I’m sure they’re letting you and your friends build a facial recognition database of each other. Facebook will own all the recognition data. You can keep your tags from showing up, but the facial recognition data itself is going straight into a deep, sinister data center somewhere.
See also: Do You Have Bad Facebook Manners?
Why else would Mark Zuckerberg’s sister Randi be furious when a picture she shared on Facebook was publicly viewable? She knows that it’s being used for evil. Poor, poor billionaire Randi. Fortunately, she can afford the plastic surgery to have her face altered to look like Jennifer Aniston, so no one can use Facebook’s facial recognition database to find her in a crowd.
Use Sgrouples for Group Collaboration
Social media in general has been horrible for privacy. Most people have enough information in their public Facebook profile to have their identity stolen. And people share much, much more, and don’t even know who can see it. The current crop of social media tools try to force you to share as much as possible, as widely as possible. That’s how they make their money: the sell data about you and your sharing habits.
My friend Mark Weinstein was appalled by the situation, so he founded Sgrouples.com. Sgrouples makes privacy its #1 value while providing collaboration and social media tools. Unlike Facebook, Sgrouples first assumes you want maximum privacy, then it lets you share files, message boards, photos, and online spaces where only your family, church group, club, fraternity, sorority, group house, or polyamorous family unit can see the stuff you share.
Full disclosure, I’m an investor in Sgrouples.com because I believe so deeply in its mission, so color me biased.
Avoid XBox
And one final note: Privacy isn’t just a concern with “real” computers. As my friend Ed pointed out, if the NSA is really tapping into Microsoft and other big tech companies all the time, it seems like the new XBox gives them a 24/7 internet-connected camera that can register your gestures, in your living room. I’d think twice before installing that. Not only does everyone have the right to dance around their living room in their underwear, privately, but everyone else has the right not to have to watch. Very few of us look as good in tighty whiteys as Tom Cruise did in Risky Business.
This is Stever Robbins. I coach people who want to change the world, whether they’re part of a large organization, or just getting started. I help them increase the scope of their vision and link it to the action needed to get things done. If you want to know more, visit SteverRobbins.com.
Work Less, Do More, and have a Great Life!
Magical Octopus and Privacy images courtesy of Shutterstock
About the Author
Stever Robbins was the host of the podcast Get-it-Done Guy from 2007 to 2019. He is a graduate of W. Edward Deming’s Total Quality Management training program and a Certified Master Trainer Elite of NLP. He holds an MBA from the Harvard Business School and a BS in Computer Sciences from MIT.
