Achieving Better Digital Privacy
We live in a truly remarkable age, and thanks to the power of technology and the internet we’ve never had better access to information, communication tools, learning platforms, and much more. Many of the services that we find online are offered for free, but like with many things in life, there is a price to pay at some point or another, even if it’s not always a direct monetary transaction.
This is how some of the world’s most successful modern tech giants have become the world leaders both in reach and profits. Facebook, Google, TikTok, and a handful of other platforms making use of personal data to monetise their customers and make a profit.
But it has also meant that they are delving deeper into our lives than ever before, and across the world more and more people are starting to fear the amount of information these corporations are harvesting.
Limit Available Information
One of the easiest ways to limit companies from harvesting too much data is by being selective about the kind of data that you upload to their platforms. It’s important to keep in mind that a company like Facebook will hang on to just about everything that’s uploaded virtually forever, so taking the time to curate exactly what you add to your pages and profiles is a solid step toward taking back your privacy.
Of course, the usage of these kinds of service inherently means that they will always have access to some information, which is why many privacy advocates recommend removing services like Facebook from your life completely – which isn’t always possible.
Use Encrypted Instant Messaging
Another way that companies and other 3rd parties can obtain personal and sometimes even financial information is by scanning through private messages that individuals send to one another, which only happens when they use an unencrypted messaging service.
Fortunately, encrypted instant messaging is becoming more common, and it’s always worth trying to avoid any kind of messaging that isn’t encrypted. While popular messaging service WhatsApp is technically encrypted, they do still collect a lot of metadata from their users, so it might be better to instead use a platform like Signal for private messaging.
Aim For Open Source
While this might be something that the more technically minded might be interested in, it’s still something that everyone should look in to. A lot of the software that we use on a daily basis is classified as “proprietary”, which means that the code used to create it is hidden away and allows the developer and companies to add any anti-privacy features that they want. Open source applications have their code available to the public, so it can be checked for anything malicious, and it’s good to try and use software that’s open source, whether it’s for messaging, email, or play at onlinepokiesnz.co.nz F-Droid is a highly respected app distribution platform for Android that only offers open-source apps.
Email Services
Gmail, Yahoo, and Outlook are the most popular email services in the world, but they are far from private. It’s well-known that anyone that uses these services will have their emails scans, usually for advertisement purposes. The easiest way to get around this is by using a private email service, with the two most popular being Tutanota and Protonmail.