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Water is a vital part of life. The human body is capable of surviving without food for weeks. But without water, even surviving 127 hours is unbearable. We use it to drink, cook, bathe, wash, and what not using water. Well, the purpose of starting the discussion with water was to move your attention to a rather serious issue that is the use of Internet. It might not be wrong to say that we are living in a global setup where the Internet has taken the form of water. Our jobs, social life, personal life, communications or in simple words our whole life revolves around it in one way or the other. The Internet has definitely brought a positive change in our lives but it has also given birth to a lot of serious issues. Some of which include data theft, misuse of personal information, identity theft and much more. Thanks to the internet, our lives are like an open book anyone can read.
We can’t obviously stop using the Internet as it has become an essential part of our lives but we can definitely take a few measures to make sure our private information remains private. So, if you use the internet too often then make it your habit to follow the tips given below as it is your privacy and safety at stake.
Do Not Reuse Passwords
Do not, I repeat DO NOT reuse passwords. If the password to your cloud is same as that of your email account, then you might have unwillingly given the hacker access to your financial accounts, as well as the ability to reset all of your passwords. To avoid situations like this one should always use different passwords for all of their online accounts. It may sound like a very tedious task, but it will certainly help keep you safe. Also, don’t use the same password for too long.
Avoid Storing Sensitive Information Online
Words like “privacy” and “private” no longer apply to any information that you choose to share on the internet. Thus, storing your important files on the cloud or anywhere else on the net might not be a good idea. With that being said, storing sensitive data on the cloud for a long period of time is a big no-no. My advice would be to store those files online that you need to access frequently and avoid putting files with data like credit card number, home address, passwords, etc. online.
Encrypt
Encrypting data is one of the best ways to protect data that is stored online. And it is simple too. All you have to do is use any software to encrypt the file i.e. create a password for that file and move that password protected file to your online cloud storage. This way anyone invading your account will not be able to access said files without knowing the password.
“Zero-Knowledge” Privacy
A few cloud services also offer local encryption and decryption of your files, along with the regular options. This way no one would have access to your files other than you, including the server administrators and service providers. This “zero-knowledge” privacy is able to cloud services like Spideroak and Wuala.
Prevent Automatic Media Upload
Cloud services like iCloud and Dropbox usually ask the users if they want all their pictures and videos to be uploaded to cloud automatically. In theory, this looks like a good way to back up all of your memories but sometimes the data that was meant for your eyes only gets uploaded as well. This can put a serious damper on your personal privacy as anyone can look into your private and intimate data online.
Backup Your Media Offline
While cloud provides the perfect platform to backup all of your data, backing up your data that is important to you locally might be a good idea as well. This way if you lose your phone, the cloud server crashes down or if someone hacks onto your account and deletes all of your data, your data would not be truly lost.
