Showing posts with label Privacy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Privacy. Show all posts

Monday

Worried about Google tracking? Tips to protect your privacy

Posted By: Arin Dey - July 16, 2018
We all love Google, sure their results are awesome, however if you're concerned about privacy follow this post to know how you can modify the data of yourself that Google already has. Google is the number one search engine in the world now. Yes, it is and Google can snoop into your lives, build a huge profile over your connections and sell them. That's how it has amassed a fortune of making Google a top MNC in the world. Literally, Google is almost owning the internet. 

Worried about Google tracking? Tips to protect your privacy
They read/scan your emails, have built a profile based on you by tracking your web usage activities and advertising preferences of yours linked to a unique advertising id and sells them to the highest bidder at a great price. But unknowingly we take risk on losing our important data, ignoring how should we protect sensitive data from loss or theft.

How and where your data hides?
 Go to https://myaccount.google.com and you will find the shit you have done over the internet. You can delete them and disable all the things.

If you actively use Gmail, Google Drive, Google Assistant and what not? They are free because they aren't selling you the product. It's we the consumers who are the victims or so-called products.

In fact, they are making billions out of your crush's romantic messages, your cute kids pictures or even some of the weird and wild imaginary things your searched for on their website. Google maintains huge archives with a mammoth amount of data.

There have been several instances recently based on racial profiling and discriminatory hiring practices. For this, Google has been warned by several privacy and security agencies for alleged snooping into everything out their on the internet as if they own it! European Union has alleged Google a lot of times.

How to prevent security & privacy breach?

Even if you are a great Google lover, there are few steps that can be followed to be safe while using email/search/cloud services over internet by controlling or avoiding few Google products.

· Opt out of advertising based on your preferences.

· Stop using Gmail and switch to Protonmail/Tutanota.

· Avoid Google Drive and instead use Tresorit/SpiderOak. Else use BoxCryptor or other services to pre encrypt your files before uploading to Google Drive etc.

· If you're concerned about privacy switch to DuckDuckGo/StartPage/Qwant immediately.

· In case, you want an alternate safe search engine then switch to Privado (It doesn't store search history or IPs).

· Undoubtedly chrome is a great browser. Install extensions like Ublock origin, HTTPS Everywhere, Privacy Badger and Disconnect. If not switch to Firefox!

· If you're using an android device do this as soon as possible: Navigate to Settings >Google>Ads and opt out of personalization and reset your advertising id every month.

· Try avoiding apps called Allo/Duo.

Along with the above steps, open the URL https://myaccount.google.com/activitycontrols and make sure you are signed in to your Google account. Then, make sure all the slider/toggles are to the left ("paused"). If a confirmation box pops up asking you to confirm that you want to pause an activity, confirm it by clicking "Pause". Toggle to pause for Location history, Voice & Audio Activity, YouTube Search & Watch History. Additionally, under "Web & App Activity", uncheck "Include Chrome browsing history and activity from websites and apps that use Google services."

There are aspects of Google, both good and bad, that this article hasn't covered because the company is simply too big, and too complicated to comprehend. I'm not anti Google, however being concerned about how our data is used, who uses it and what pros and cons it holds is a consumer right. I am writing this post and sharing my opinion on the basis I learnt and experienced while using several popular products of Google.

Just remember one thing, if you're not paying for the product, you are the product! There is no such thing as a free lunch. I’m not sure how many people are aware of this. But the next time while you’re browsing the internet for finding some information or enjoying a video on YouTube, always remember that Google is watching your every move; because that’s the price you pay for that free service.

I would love to hear from you more on this.

Tuesday

Blackphone Privacy Enabled Smartphones are Available Now

Posted By: Arin Dey - July 01, 2014
User’s privacy is now available for purchase, which is available in a smartphone. Blackphone, a “security-enhanced Android build” smartphone running PrivatOS, has been called spy-proof which means it has the ability to prevent intelligence organizations, such as the National Security Agency.

Blackphone Launches Privacy Enabled Smartphones

The website says “Your phone should be yours. Reclaim the power of choice. Now only you decide what to share, what to communicate, and what to keep entirely to yourself.”

This smartphone users will be able to make calls, send texts, videos and chats securely, as well as transfer files and browse the Internet through a secure virtual private network. All the pre-orders for the device began in February 2014 and the device is now shipping those orders to its customers.

Blackphone is an effort by partnership between Madrid company Geeksphone and Silent Circle, an encrypted communications service provider.

The phone features a 4.7-inch display, quad-core 2GHz processor, 1GB of RAM and a 2,000 mAh battery. Interest people can click here to book the smartphone.

Blackphone is available as unlocked and features a number of pre-installed privacy tools, which are enabled for at least two years of use. These tools include the Silent Circle suite of applications such as Silent Phone, Silent Text and Silent Contacts; anonymous search, private browsing, and VPN from Disconnect; and secure cloud file storage from SpiderOak. If you want to view the applications then click here.

Thursday

How To Protect Your Facebook Profile Shadow

Posted By: Poketors - August 22, 2013
You are on Facebook and can't recall or remember whether you have created a profile really on it. This is the situation when you are quite confused. What is this? A fake profile? A shadow profile. How does Facebook store our personal information? In survey, it is found that some government agencies like National Security Agency in the US use several tools to get data from social networking sites like Facebook and we don't have any control to make it private.

How To Protect Your Facebook Profile Shadow
How Does Facebook get These Information?

Now the question is how Facebook has such private information? Lets start from beginning. When you create an account with email address and phone numbers, Facebook keeps these information together to identify you later on. Unknowingly Facebook stores all the important information about you in their database. So your private data is stored alongside all of these details you never knew Facebook has already collected about you. 

This is called the "Shadow Profile". This is the reason why you must have a shadow profile created whether you use it or not. Facebook repeatedly says that they don't collect information about the people who don't use Facebook. But, is it the real scenario?

Spooky Thing :

Hope everyone of us has seen the message "People you might know" feature of Facebook. may be you worked with a colleague long back or might be a mutual friend who doesn't have your email address and phone number. Then how Facebook suggests us to add them? Is it a simple "Find Friend" feature? Not at all, this is done by your shadow profile.

Even the "Find Friend" feature has the details about your past company or address or phone number or an email address. With the help of these information Facebook creates a shadow profile of you just to make a connection to you.  So when you find some old colleague is there in the suggestion message from Facebook, you can consider that any one or more information is matched with that particular profile either the address or the phone number connection etc.
Facebook says "“Find Friends uploads contacts from your device and stores them on Facebook’s servers where they may be used to help others search for people or to generate friend suggestions for you and others.”
Once you both are connected, Facebook searches for more and more matches with the information from both of your profiles.

Is It An Ethical Way or Legal?

If you ask us then we would say "Yes!". Because when you open an account in Facebook we normally don't read the TOS thoroughly and accept by checking the box within a second. In a survey, it is found that very few people read the details in the terms of services. Eventually we only do give Facebook the authority to keep our personal information too.
Facebook says : “We receive information about you from your friends and others, such as when they upload your contact information, post a photo of you, tag you in a photo or status update, or at a location, or add you to a group. When people use Facebook, they may store and share information about you and others that they have, such as when they upload and manage their invites and contacts.”
Some people who are not using facebook obviously think that it is not legal and some may take it in other way. It doesn't matter what people think but the fact is that our private information is shared publicly. 

What If You Friend Shares And How To Stop It ?

It is true that the information shared by any of the person who knows you in real life or a friend  in Facebook. How to stop it? Well, there is no specific way by which we can stop it except  preventing the information to be shared by your friends who know the information, store the date electronically, or have updated some information in Facebook. It is also possible that your email address is navigated by the Gmail account of any Gmail user to whom you have sent email or received and email from that account. As a whole, somehow and somebody has updated your information in Facebook database.

How To Keep Your Data Private?

Below suggested steps would help you to keep your email address or phone number private :
  • Should not call or email to any unknown person.
  • Share your information among the close and trusted people.
  • Ask your friends not to update your phone number or email address in Facebook application running on smart phones.
  • Ask your friends not to share your information with other people without your knowledge.
What Is Your Scope Here?

The best thing is to make possible changes in settings which will worth maintaining your privacy on Facebook. As a conclusion, this post doesn't say you to delete Facebook account or making it read only profile but it encourages the users how to make your facebook profile safe, secure and private over social media network.

How Safe Is Your Website [Infographic]

Posted By: Poketors - August 15, 2013
Thousands of website owners and bloggers complain about the problem related to site hacking or tampering. But have you ever thought that how many of them are able to protect their blog/website from this issue? Very few because they keep committing mistakes like hosting their sites on a very cheap domain hosting service provider, giving a weak username and password, gaining access to FTP link and several threats to website/blogs.

How Safe Is Your Website [Infographic]


What is the solution for this. There is not a single or one word answer for this. You have to opt for a better and secure hosting, give strong password, verify your website with crawl errors, visibility. We found a very well described infographic which explains how to make your blog safe.

How Safe Is Your Website
Source : WhoIsHostingThis

Sunday

Facebook Privacy Fails Over The Years [Infographic]

Posted By: Poketors - December 30, 2012
How did Facebook piracy fail and what happened after that? Even after so much battle regarding privacy, Facebook is still considered as the most used social media network in the world.

Facebook Privacy Fails Over The Years [Infographic]

Here we go with a nice inforgraphic which explains the Facebook Privacy Fails over the years.

Facebook Privacy Fails Over The Years

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