Category: dsdefender

Your infant grandson sitting on the (endlessly patient) family dog. His older sister’s kindergarten portrait. The giddy dance they perform every time you play “Yellow Submarine.” They’re all moments you cherish and want to remember. And you know your friends would love them, too. So you do what so many of us do now. You share them. Not just with your closest confidants, but with hundreds of “friends” and countless people you’ll never meet.

Those sweet faces, oblivious to the insatiable hunger of our social media feeds, are also data. Bits of information to be sold, bought, and built into profiles that billion-dollar corporations use to hone their algorithms and perfect their advertising.

This is the information economy, built on tracking our online movements and gathering clues about who we are, how we live, and what we value. As adults, we began participating in this economy as soon as we opened our first email account, ordered a book from Amazon, and posted a shot of our outstretched legs on a sandy beach. We made that choice, even if we didn’t realize then just how much we were giving away in exchange for convenience and connections.

But are we making that choice for our kids and grandkids, too? Are we unwittingly shoving them into this new reality—where every click and image is recorded and analyzed—without their consent? Is that fair?

Big Tech runs on the personal information—the data—we feed it. With it, developers and engineers shape our world. The apps we use, websites we visit, ads we see—they’re all built on our data. Because of that, the companies behind those services and products know a whole lot about us. Governments, which acquire much of that data for their own purposes, do as well.

Where that leaves us is anybody’s guess. We’re the guinea pigs in a worldwide, multi-generational experiment that is far from over. But we should leave our kids out of it. At the very least, we should respect them enough to let them decide if they want to participate.

By sharing photos of their first lost tooth and new birthday dress, we’re handing over their personal information—their age, their preferences, their faces, their anonymity—to Big Tech.  All before they have any idea what we’re taking from them.

Don’t love your kids and grandkids any less. Snap all the photos of them you can. But think twice before posting those images. Behind those smiles is information, and it’s not entirely yours to share.

Reprinted with permission from PrivacyParent.com

Every year we make New Year’s resolutions. Sometimes we succeed, often we don’t. Either way, resolutions can be useful. They indicate an awareness that something about the way we live needs to change. For many of us, the way we use technology—smartphones, fitness trackers, social media—needs to change. So here are a handful of resolutions aimed at improving our relationship with tech. They’ve got two things going for them: they’re important and they’re easy to achieve.

1. Delete old apps. It’s not just the apps you use that soak up your data. Long-ignored and dormant apps—even if they’re closed—are still gathering information and conveying it to the companies that operate them. If there’s an app on your phone  you haven’t used in a month, you probably don’t need it. Delete it. As a bonus, with fewer apps junking up your phone, it will probably work better.
2. Turn off voice assistants like Siri and Google assist. Yes, they’re listening to you. Are they recording what you say? Sometimes. Are Apple and Google using your voice commands for their benefit? Definitely. What’s in it for you? Not a lot. Turn them off.
3. Set your social media accounts to private. Instagram has a private setting. So do Facebook and the others. Use them. If you’re going to use social media, keep your posts visible only to the people to whom you’re directly connected.
4. Try enjoying being disconnected. Be happy you missed that event everyone’s posting about and went for a walk in the woods with a friend instead. Embrace JOMO. The Joy Of Missing Out. You’ll be happy you did.
5. Don’t use public WiFi. You’re working in a coffee shop and in need of a WiFi signal. Be careful. Public WiFi networks are notoriously vulnerable to hackers and “man in the middle” attacks. Instead, use an LTE signal or, better yet, buy a VPN from a trusted provider like Datacappy VPN with an integrated, ad-blocking browser.

Reprinted with permission from privacyparent.com

Atlas of Surveillance is an Open Source effort designed to inform people of surveillance technology where they live. Do you want to know what types of tracking occurs in your city? This website is a great place to start. Atlas of Surveillance also has a glossary to help you understand common police surveillance terms. Maybe you can join the effort! Make sure you know how and where it’s being used and always use a VPN when out on public Wi-Fi to encrypt your data and mask your location. It’s your privacy and YOU own it.

Did you know your cell phone is giving your location data away? It’s the perfect little tracker sitting right in your pocket sending out location reveals all day long (and all night). Data brokers sell your location data to the highest bidder and you will never know a thing! Location data collection runs much deeper than we think and the FTC is finally cracking down (read about it here) but it’s just a bare minimum start.

Using a VPN is a great start to masking your location details. It’s not a perfect science and ISP providers and streaming companies can still figure out you are using a VPN but they cannot see what you are doing online or your location. For public WiFi and general location privacy protection, a VPN is your best protection. You can also check your Settings on your mobile device to see what apps are turned on to always track your location. You can turn this off or set them to only pull location data when you are actively using the app. Remember, every move you make is likely being tracked whether it’s your phone, GPS in the car, using public WiFi or simply being outside and tracked with commercial surveillance cameras. It’s time to protect your privacy before it’s too late and you can’t get it back.

Dictionaries are obsolete, nobody uses a thesauraus and news outlets are considered too polarized to provide a fair take on anything happening in this world. Even Wikipedia is becoming old (and we all know that fact checking there is slim to nothing). “Believe what you want to believe.” This is how we are training our children to think.

Where are our kids turning to learn things now? Social media. Young users are turning to TikTok or Instagram Reels to learn about anything from how to make applesauce to how to prepare for an interview. What about when your child wants to learn how to cook chicken? What if they watch a TikTok that suggests cooking the chicken using cough medicine? The FDA had to issue a warning here for anyone trying this “recipe”. We had chicken last night for dinner but rest assured, it was not basted in cough medicine. I have a headache from this. Maybe my ibuprofin chip cookies will take care of that.