Level Up on Privacy for 2020 ?
Take your game to the next level.
If protecting your personal privacy and data rights were a game, where would you land on the leaderboard?
Startpage would like to help anyone interested in leveling up their privacy game in 2020, so we’re sharing some of the best ways to get started or improve what you’re already doing. Many of these suggestions come from our users and online privacy community leaders. Please let us know if you’d like to add your favorite privacy cheat codes to the list!
Level 1: Upgrade Your Defenses
As the New York Time’s Privacy Project reported “If you have online accounts, hackers have likely leaked data from at least one of them.” Be sure to update your accounts passwords and 2FA settings. For the full list of companies who’ve had data breaches, check out Have I Been Pwned (https://haveibeenpwned.com/).
When was the last time you intentionally updated your passwords? Do you go months without updating your software? If you continue to put off updating, you’re putting your data privacy and security at risk. Imagine you’re playing a game and you don’t upgrade your armor, ever. Your opponent is getting tougher and their weapon damage power is only increasing. There’s a reason updates happen, the same way there’s a reason for armor upgrades as you progress in the game.
If you don’t like automatic updates and tend to forget to update from time to time, no worries. An easy way to remind yourself to regularly update is to create calendar invites for yourself. Set an invite for every other month to perform regular maintenance on your privacy measures.
Things you should be updating:
- Passwords: Update all your passwords and don’t use the same one for 2 or more things! Consider investing in a password manager to help you come up with complex passwords and help you keep track of them. Too pricey? You can also make a game out of it and use a pair of dice to generate passwords with EFF’s long wordlist (https://www.eff.org/dice). If you play Catan or any other tabletop game, you already have a pair of dice.
- Software: Update your software on all devices – phones, laptops, tablets, wearables, and so on. This is also a good time to check in on what your apps are doing and removing the privacy-infringing ones. It might even give you back space on your devices.
- Yourself. Make sure you’re caught up on the latest news and privacy tools. Thanks to California legislation, technology companies put new privacy policies into effect in 2020. The game is changing all at once so it should be somewhat easy to get caught up. Here’s a short list of news outlets and privacy organizations.
- Startpage’s weekly Privacy Please blog: https://startpage.gg/blog/
- Electric Frontier Foundation: https://www.eff.org/
- Think Privacy: https://www.thinkprivacy.io/
- World Privacy Forum: https://www.worldprivacyforum.org/
Level 2: Get Yourself a Cloak of Invisibility
Go unseen like Harry Potter and get through the web without leaving a trace.
- Startpage Anonymous View lets you search and visit web results without leaving our privacy protection. They’ll never know you were there. You’ll find the feature next to every search result.
- Review the privacy settings for your preferred browser. You can also check out PrivacyTools IO (https://www.privacytools.io/) for other browser options. You shouldn’t have to use only the browser that came preloaded on your device — you have options. Startpage is compatible with a broad range of browsers, so you won’t have to worry about losing Anonymous View.
- Turn off location sharing on all your devices. You might be surprised to find out just how much data you’re sharing from your phone’s location. In December 2020, The New York Times found “a home location and an office location was enough to identify a person.“ For simple steps to protect your phone and stop sharing your location, follow these steps (https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/19/opinion/location-tracking-privacy-tips.html) and to read the full investigation from the New York Times, read here (https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/19/opinion/location-tracking-cell-phone.html).
To invest in privacy minded products, check out our privacy gift guide (https://startpage.gg/blog/privacy-awareness/give-the-gift-of-privacy-this-holiday-season-its-the-gift-that-keeps-giving/).
Level 3: Bring Your Friends Onboard
The “network effect” is real, so in order to be successful, create a culture of privacy among your friends and peers. These are the people who can leave you vulnerable to privacy leaks or attacks. From posting an embarrassing photo of you online to getting you to download an app that tracks your every move, they could be a weak link in your game. So, get them on board. You can start by getting them to switch to a privacy messaging app.
Check out our blog on messaging apps (https://startpage.gg/blog/privacy-awareness/dont-naughty-weve-got-nice-tips-sending-holiday-messages-private/). Easy-peasy.
Privacy Pro Tip: Stay up-to-date on privacy and tech-related news by using the Startpage News Tab. When searching on Startpage, you’re guaranteed that you won’t be targeted with select stories and opinions. You will get an accurate representation of news on the web.
Sources: https://www.nytimes.com/guides/privacy-project/how-to-protect-your-digital-privacy
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