Aura is an all-in-one digital security solution that safeguards your and your family's identity, finances, devices, and personal data.
Online privacy is a term that we have all heard going around–whether it's a casual conversation with a friend or a news article. So, how do you remain private in the digital world and is it achievable? The short answer: yes, it is. It isn't the simplest of feats, but it is achievable, and it is the way to avoid things like having your identification stolen or your personal information sold on the dark web.
But that does not happen to regular folks like us, right? Indeed, it does and it can, as it happened to John1.
One morning, John woke to the surprise of an unsettling email from his credit card company informing him that as part of a standard scan of the dark web, they had found a large chunk of his personal information out in the open for the world to see. At first, he thought it was a scam (who wouldn't), but a bit of research confirmed it to be legitimate and so he, for lack of a better term, freaked out. His full name, email address, and driver's license had all appeared on the dark web! He phoned his credit card company, who thankfully explained they caught it in the nick of time and nothing too serious in terms of his money or identity had happened–but it could have gone a lot worse.
These kinds of situations are definitely scary, but as we said above, there ARE precautions you can take to protect yourself online2.
3. Keep your privacy settings tight Take the time to carefully consider your privacy settings–what do you share with companies and what do you keep private. Go through your location tracking settings and switch off automatic geolocation, decide what information you share publicly or hide, and consider what you “like” on social media sites (they show up in search results if someone is searching for you, even if your account is private).
4. Remove unnecessary applications and browser extensions Here's the first of the golden rules of protecting your privacy: distrust all applications. Most applications make money by collecting user data, so keep that in mind the next time you download one (only download them from reputable sites like the official stores). But what do you do to limit what they collect?
Once again, look through the settings, but also delete any programs (browser add-ons and applications) that you do not use, so they will not keep accumulating data about you (most of them do it in the background, even if you do not utilize them). And even if you do browse a site now and then, it is generally best to do it in your browser and not install the application.
5. Clear your information out of search engines
Search engines collect personal data about us on a daily basis. And the businesses that run those search engines, including Google and Bing, also provide us with our web browsers, Chrome and Edge. Removing your information out of their databases will provide you with an extra layer of privacy. Here’s how to do it for the big three:
For Google: Clear everything on the My Activity page. For Microsoft: You will need to clear the data individually for Microsoft Edge and Bing. For Yahoo: You can clear data for search history management.
The bad news is that it isn't possible to completely eliminate all of the tracking by Google, so a good alternative is to use an online privacy-oriented search engine like DuckDuckGo.
6. Surf the web with a secure VPN (Virtual Private Network) If you use a VPN (like the one Aura provides as part of its digital protection suite), you're essentially hiding your whereabouts from someone who's stalking or searching for you. It protects your web data with an encryption that makes it un-readable to hackers. That means they, along with businesses or data collection agencies, won't have the capability to monitor your web activity and potentially gain access to information that you do not want them to.
7. Keep your apps current Don’t disregard the updates! When a vulnerability or bug is discovered in an application, the updates are rolled out to “fix” them, so if you don’t update to the new software you’re giving cybercrime an open door to your data. Turn on the automatic updates on your phone and your computer, and it should be a practice to search for new versions. 8. Turn off ad and data tracking The truth is most of your personal data that is being accumulated is for advertising. So do your best to turn off as many of these trackers as possible! Don’t give your data to the pop-us, decline cookies on websites if you have the option, turn off cross-app tracking in your phone settings, and turn off ad personalization in the applications that you use. If you can turn off ad and data tracking on the big sites like Google, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, and Amazon, you’ve eliminated a big chunk of the companies that track you.
9. Encrypt your data Put an encryption system on your device to secure your personal data like data, texts, and emails. No one without an encryption key or password will ever have access to any of your data. You should also store less in the Cloud and more on a hard drive. This will make it much harder for cyber criminals to access your information! There also exist messaging programs like WhatsApp that use end-to-end encryption, i.e., they do not have "backdoors" to which hackers have access. 10. Don't share 3rd party app connections. Don't use the same account to log into more than one different app. If your Facebook account is the one that you log into your Twitter and Instagram account with, then whoever knows that one password gets into all of those. Work through what's connected to what and attempt to keep them as separate as possible.