7 Quick Tips for Internet Safety and Privacy

The Internet itself is an awesome tool that can enrich your life, but only if you use it smartly. Every year brings a new cautionary tale of Internet privacy violation and this is why we have compiled these 7 quick tips that will protect your Internet safety and privacy if you stick to them.

1. Educate Yourself on Internet Safety and Privacy

Not just yourself. Educate your employees, kids, girlfriend, boyfriend, spouse, etc on cybersecurity.

Read and learn about recognizing suspicious online activity to be able to avoid it best. This is especially important to teach your children as they can be an easy target for different kinds of online predators. 

Also, as an adult, you should know about different Internet security and privacy acts like the COPPA (Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act), which defines how websites can collect information on children below 13 years of age.

2. Don’t Let Them Track You

Almost every website you visit will collect data about you, including who you are, where you are located, what device you are using, what you bought, what pages you visited, how long your session lasted, etc. 

Websites usually need this data, or “analytics”, to better understand their audience and visitors. However, this often goes too far and it’s your right to say “I don’t want you to collect this data on me”.

But what can you do?

The first thing people usually think about is different privacy modes like Google’s Incognito or Safari’s Private window. But that only means that your information won’t be stored on your device. Websites you visit will still see your information and will be able to track you (along with your ISP, government agencies, etc.).

Instead, you need a VPN. A Virtual Private Network is a service that will tunnel your Internet traffic to another server, with a different IP address from yours. What this does is showing websites you visit the VPN’s IP and not yours, thus making it harder for them to track you.

Another good solution is rotating residential proxies – users can select specific locations for browsing the web having their IP addresses concealed.

In addition to using VPNs, it’s prudent to explore browsers and search engines designed with privacy at their core, avoiding any tracking of your search history or personal data collection, thus significantly enhancing your digital privacy.

Regularly revising your privacy settings on social media and other online platforms is also essential, as it helps limit the amount of data you share publicly. Remember, these platforms often update their policies and settings with minimal notice. Furthermore, getting involved with digital privacy advocacy groups or engaging in online forums can be incredibly rewarding.

3. Be Careful What You Share on Social Media

Social media is today an integral part of most people’s lives. On average, people spend over 2 hours on social media every day and we spend almost 7 hours on the Internet in total.

Unfortunately, most people don’t even think about the amount of personal information their social accounts reveal about them by default.

Remember that some things are for only certain people’s eyes (like your friends) and some are for your eyes only. Don’t share any information that can endanger you, your family, or your business in any way.

Digging deeper into this issue, one can discover the pros and cons of social media for students. There is no doubt that these platforms enhance communication, provide access to a vast repository of learning materials, and facilitate the global exchange of ideas. However, caution must be exercised when dealing with digital technologies – unwanted information sharing, the threat of cyberbullying, and the strain on the psyche speak to potential problems.

One practical step to protect your identity online is to set default privacy settings on social networks. By customizing these settings, you can manage your audience, preventing the accidental sharing of sensitive information and strengthening your “digital armor”.

Change your default social privacy settings.

4. Only Give Your Private Email to Select Websites

If you’re going around, sharing your private email with everyone you meet on the Internet, be ready for a lot of spam in your inbox.

Yes, you will probably have to share your email if you’re buying something in an online store or with certain websites, but that doesn’t mean you should share it with every Internet Joe on Facebook.

If you shop online a lot, create a different email account.

5. Use Secure Passwords for Your Online Accounts

In 2017, the average email address of a U.S. user was associated with no less than 130 accounts. Unfortunately, many people either use weak passwords, even for sensitive accounts like their email or bank account, or they reuse them.

A password is often your one and only protection from someone abusing that account. It’s very easy, even for an email hacker with very little skill, to brute-force common passwords like “12345678”, “qwerty” and similar. 

Avoid using passwords like these and those that can easily identify you. A strong password should include a combination of small and capitalized letters, numbers and special characters and should be around 8-10 characters long (longer passwords are harder to remember, so there’s no point in using them).

Finally, be sure to use a different password for each service. Although you can sign up for many websites using just your Google or Facebook account, OAuth has its disadvantages and relying too much on it may aid phishing by making users careless.

6. Learn to Recognize and Avoid Suspicious Email Links and Attachments

Over 300 billion emails are sent per day. An average person sends and receives around 120+ business emails every day.

Any number of those can contain a malicious link or attachment.

Today’s online scammers and hackers are extremely skilled at tricking people into revealing personal information, using fake websites and malicious software.

If you want to protect your Internet safety and privacy, be very cognizant of the links you click on or attachments you download. Look carefully before you do that and only do so if you trust the source 100%.

7. Tell Others What They Can and What They Can’t Post About You Online

Of course, people will post and share things about you just like you will about them. Unfortunately, some people won’t consider that what they are sharing may negatively affect you.

Talk to them and let them know that you’re not okay with them posting about your private life, company, or where you went on holiday. Make sure they do not share your personal information online.

Conclusion

If a large hotel company like Marriott can be a victim of a data breach or Twitter employees of a spear-phishing attack, so can your online accounts. 

These 7 tips we just gave you might not be enough to fully protect you against Internet privacy violations, but they are a good start nevertheless.

To get on an even higher level and protect your Internet privacy rights, start using CTemplar’s end-to-end encrypted email. 

CTemplar will protect your privacy with the strongest 4096-bit encryption and enable you to be completely anonymous so no one will be able to track you.

Do you want to be like a ghost and protect your Internet safety and privacy? Sign up for a CTemplar account today.