On completing this course, you will be able to:
Welcome to this module, which looks at how to protect yourself online and maintain your privacy.
Remember, your online data is valuable to cybercriminals. So what can you do to stay safe?
There are some simple strategies that you can use to protect your personal devices and maintain your data securely. Let’s take a look at what these are.
Popular online services, such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Apple and Microsoft, use two factor authentication to add an extra layer of security for account logins.
Besides your username and password or personal identification number (PIN), two factor authentication requires a second token to verify your identity. This may be a:
Click here to find out more about two factor authentication.
Be careful!
Even with two factor authentication, hackers can still gain access to online accounts through phishing attacks, malware and social engineering.
Open authorization (OAuth) is an open standard protocol that allows you to use your credentials to access third-party applications without exposing your password.
Let see what this means in practice:
You decide to update your new job position on your social networks. When doing so, one of the sites asks you to update your profile information to ensure you receive the content that you really don’t want to miss!
You take a look at the missing fields. Which ones do you fill in? Remember, answering correctly will improve your privacy settings, so think carefully about the information you want to share online.
Which of the following information you want to share online?
Explanation:
In order to safeguard your privacy on social media, it’s important to share as little personal information as possible. You should also check your social media settings so that only people you know can see your activities or engage in conversations with you.
The more information you share online, the easier it is for someone to create a profile about you and take advantage of you, both online and offline.
A simple forged or spoofed email can lead to a massive data breach and perhaps cause irreversible damage to your reputation.
The Internet is a great tool for not only accessing information quickly and easily but also for communicating with friends, family and colleagues. But did you know that anyone with physical access to your device or router can view what websites you’ve visited? And that every time you send an email, it is readable by anyone who has access to the digital chain between you and your recipient?
So, what can you do?
These problems can be minimized by enabling the in-private browsing mode on your web browser. Many of the most commonly used web browsers have their own name for private browser mode:
incognito
When private mode is enabled, cookies — files saved to your device to indicate what websites you’ve visited — are disabled. Therefore, any temporary internet files are removed and your browsing history is deleted when you close the window or program. This may help to prevent others from gathering information about your online activities and trying to entice you to buy something with targeted ads.
Even with private browsing enabled and cookies disabled, companies are constantly developing new ways of fingerprinting users in order to track their online behavior. For example, some intermediary devices, like routers, can gather information about a user’s web surfing history.
Ultimately, it is your responsibility to safeguard your data, your identity and your computing devices. So, the next time you go to send an email or browse the Internet, why not check to make sure you’re following all the guidelines outlined in this module? Just a few simple precautions now could save you from having to deal with problems later.