Despite the world stopping in 2020 due to the COVID-19 outbreak, hackers were more active than ever before, taking advantage of the global economic downturn to penetrate hundreds of databases and leaking a massive amount of private and sensitive data. With each new year, the number of cyberattacks increases, and cybercrime has spiked again in 2020 and 2021.
Lockdowns all over the world have completely changed the way people go about their lives. Almost everything had to be done online, from working to buying groceries, causing consumers to leave a larger digital footprint than ever before. The increased volume of data being shared drew the attention of several hacker groups seeking for security flaws to exploit.
But malicious attacks aren’t the only issue regarding our private data. Until a few years ago, cybersecurity and online privacy weren’t the first things on our minds, as the concept was generally respected in many countries. However, as surveillance becomes more of a common factor in our daily lives, privacy is in danger of becoming a luxury of the few rather than a right of the many. With mass surveillance and data collection programs enforced all over the world, protecting your online private data has become imperative.
It’s a fact: our private data can be very vulnerable if we don’t take the right measures to protect it. Everything from our web browser to mobile devices, including Internet of Things products like smart TVs, smart fridges, and even virtual assistants have the potential to deteriorate our privacy and personal security. To avoid malicious attacks and surveillance programs, it’s important to do whatever you can to safeguard your online privacy.
But doing that is not as hard as it seems, and with just a few simple adjustments to your devices and accounts you’ll be able to keep your personal information secure and prevent your data from being hacked, as well as protecting your privacy from those you don’t consent to sharing your information with. With the following simple measures, you’ll be able to protect yourself and your information online.
Limit personal information
A great way to protect your privacy online is to don’t overshare on social media. Posting too much information on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram could make it easier for cybercriminals to obtain information that could lead to identity theft or financial frauds.
Could a cybercriminal, for instance, go through your tweets and find out what your high school mascot was or your mother’s maiden name? This kind of information is often used to change passwords on different accounts.
You can start by ignoring those “About me” fields in social media profiles. You shouldn’t disclose your birth year or location, and other sensitive data, which might make you an easy target to cybercriminals. Also, you should experiment with different privacy settings, and limit who can see your posts and access your profile.
Secure your accounts
In the past few years, data breaches and password leaks have terrorized users all over the world, striking industry giants such as Microsoft, Facebook, Yahoo, and a slew of other corporations. If you have any online accounts, it’s most likely that hackers have leaked data from at least one of them.
A good way to find out if any of your accounts was hacked is to search for your email address on Have I Been Pwned?, a cross-reference website that allows users to check whether their personal data has been compromised by breaches and leaks.
To avoid these data leaks, you should always use strong passwords and monitor your accounts for security breaches. You might also consider using a password manager to generate and remember different, complex passwords for every account. Apart from that, two-step authentication is an important feature to help you protect your privacy. Most banks, major social networks, and even some of the best online casinos USA provide this option – you just need to log in to your account, and then insert a temporary code that is sent to you in a text message or email.
Protect your web browsing
It may sound creepy, but companies and websites track everything we do online, such as our location, browsing habits, shopping preferences, and much more. All this collected data reveals a lot about us and can be used for many things, including targeted ads, one of the Internet’s most unsettling innovations.
To avoid this, you can use incognito or private modes that are offered by most web browsers today. When you browse with these modes turned one, websites won’t be able to save your browsing history, temporary internet files, or cookies.However, these private modes aren’t completely safe, so you should also consider using a Virtual Private Network, or VPN, which masks your Internet Protocol (IP) address so your online actions are virtually untraceable.