Privacy & Security 101
Why it is worth your time? You will confirm what you know or learn something valuable. This value refers, but is not limited, to the following, evolving areas of interest: Reduction in risk of exploitation, financial or otherwise. Reduction of wasted mental focus and memory emerging from ineffective or inefficient processes and patterns. Reduction in data or property loss, much of which is irreplaceable. If you have nothing more to learn in these areas I invite you to become an author/contributor here to share with others and take an active role in raising our collective awareness of best practices in the digital age. Why trust anything that I say? You shouldn't. "Trust but verify" is a guiding principle that applies across domains and I recommend that you apply it here, both while evaluating what you read as well as while reflecting on your own cognitive biases and filters that may lead you astray. I believe that I am qualified and hold a few pieces of paper that suggest others do as well. More importantly, this topic is a primary interest of mine. Maintaining awareness of relevant tools and best practices to carry forward in the ongoing, dynamic data war over our information, as well as which to part with, demands effort and action fueled by interest. This is mine and I intend to grow from yours. Credentials? I supplemented my BS in Marketing with a BS in Computer Science from UCF in 2011 and have been employed as a software engineer ever since. My employment domain includes Federal and Local government and spans three employers. I earned a CompTIA Security+ cert for my current employer. While security best practices may most generously be said to complement my primary professional direction, it has never taken second place in my personal life. Born in 1980, I witnessed the explosion of the internet age and the ongoing transition from hyper concern over data protection to blindly trading data for features claimed to be free. I started learning Linux with Slackware in the mid '90s, eventually settling on Debian as my preferred OS. Ever the curious kid, I visited BBS's, touched on the tools of a script kiddie, and learned about Ma Bell, 2600, and the differences between hacking, phreaking, virii, anarchy, cracking. I understand social engineering and which I consider the present, advertising driven revenue model, filtered through my prior professional career in Sales and Marketing, I possess a non-trivial concern over a possible future to which we may unwittingly advance. So, without any further delay, I present a few often-overlooked basics, some of which will need to be explored and explained in future posts: Updates - Do Them. Computer, phone, game system, application, whatever... Do the updates and don't delay. They are almost always closing up security holes that can be exploited by someone that knows what they are doing. VPNs - Pay for One. You can get them for free but nothing is free (a later topic). I like Mullvad because it allows truly anonymous access if I want to go full tinfoil hat, it has VPN client tools available for all devices of which I use Linux, Android, Windows, and Mac, and it allows multiple concurrent connections. There are many out there for next to nothing on the dollar. Feel free to comment for evaluation or suggestions. Password Manager - Use One. You can't or won't remember all of the unique passwords required in the digital age and the variation of your relative/pet's or your own signifigant date, interest, or other topic related to something on one of your social media profiles is trivial for most any bad actor to guess. The last thing you want is to open up every other account you own because of a misstep on one that shares the same password, or similar enough of one, as the rest. I like keepass. It is open source. I self-host, sync, and serve my file from a remote Debian server that I manage. There are others. Feel free to comment for evaluation or suggestions. Care if it’s gone forever? – Back It Up. There is a tradeoff between the cost you pay in money and the cost you pay trading yourself and your data as the commodity. Setting that aside, for now, there are free or low-cost options. They often have storage limitations, obviously, but you can use several different ones concurrently and if you need to store even more it is probably worth paying for extra storage. I’m pretty entrenched with a few companies, Amazon being one presently, and they offer free backup off all of your photos at the original resolution if you are a prime member. Videos have a cap so I pay for a little bit more storage and sync all my mobile videos and any documents that I would like to backup. I also sync some documents to several locations and what I use to keep redundant backup copies with zero financial cost and almost no mental energy as it runs in the background are: Dropbox, Microsoft Cloud, Amazon Drive, iCloud, Evernote, Google Drive, and my self-hosted NextCloud server. This list only touches the surface but even these simple things are frequently ignored and often exploited by bad actors. More to come soon. – Stay safe out there!