Online privacy is a vital skill for anyone who uses the internet, especially in the age of data breaches, cyberattacks, and digital surveillance. But how do you teach online privacy to yourself or others? Here are some tips and resources to help you learn and share the best practices for protecting your personal information, identity, and rights online.
The first step to teach online privacy is to understand the risks and threats that you may face online. These include hackers, scammers, identity thieves, malware, phishing, spyware, ransomware, and more. These malicious actors can access your devices, accounts, data, and networks, and use them for their own benefit or harm. They can also compromise your online reputation, security, finances, and legal rights. Therefore, you need to be aware of the signs and methods of these attacks, and how to prevent or respond to them.
We need to get students entrenched at a young age and promote it through the education system. Start by emphasizing the importance of personal information protection. Encourage students to understand the value of their data and the potential risks associated with its exposure. Introduce students to privacy settings on social media platforms and online services. Demonstrate how to adjust these settings to limit the sharing of personal information. Teach them the significance of reading & understanding privacy policies & terms of service agreements. Encourage responsible online behavior; thinking twice before posting personal information or engaging in potentially harmful activities.
The problem is that we tend to think in the wrong way! (I know, looks negative but it is just the reality) Privacy (online) has nothing to do with scammers or ransomware! Privacy means that you can do you without fears of being watched or monitored. To teach privacy is like teaching education. You get the baseline as input (in the education example, from the parenting figure) but then of course the path you trail is pretty much personal. Privacy means that you have the “patience” to make a new email for every subscription you get, for any shop that asks your email address/phone number, etc… This, in the world we live is a complex process.
One of the simplest and most effective ways to teach online privacy is to use strong passwords for your online accounts and devices. Strong passwords are long, complex, unique, and hard to guess or crack. They should include a combination of letters, numbers, symbols, and cases, and avoid common words, names, dates, or patterns. You should also change your passwords regularly, and use different passwords for different accounts and devices. To manage your passwords, you can use a password manager, a secure app that generates and stores your passwords for you.
Malware Surgeon
Privacy (online) is not related to strong or complex passwords that you can’t remember so you need an app or a post-it! It’s about segregation/compartmentalization! You have have a “[email protected]” and an “[email protected]” and you’ll be segregating your internet activity and be more private but having “[email protected]” and sign for insta/face/netflix will make anyone know a lot of things about you (think OSINT)
Another way to teach online privacy is to enable encryption for your data and communications. Encryption is a process that scrambles your data into a code that only authorized parties can read or access. Encryption can protect your data from being intercepted, modified, or stolen by unauthorized parties. You can enable encryption for your devices, such as your computer, smartphone, or tablet, by using a lock screen, a PIN, a fingerprint, or a face recognition. You can also enable encryption for your communications, such as your emails, messages, or calls, by using secure apps or platforms that offer end-to-end encryption.
A further way to teach online privacy is to control your settings for your online accounts and services. Settings are the options that allow you to customize your online experience and preferences. They also determine how much information you share with others, and how much control you have over your data and privacy. You should review and adjust your settings regularly, and choose the ones that suit your needs and expectations. For example, you can control your settings for your social media accounts, such as your profile, posts, friends, tags, notifications, and privacy. You can also control your settings for your browser, such as your cookies, history, cache, and extensions.
The final way to teach online privacy is to educate yourself and others about the latest trends and developments in the online world. The internet is constantly changing and evolving, and so are the challenges and opportunities for online privacy. You should stay informed and updated about the new technologies, tools, laws, and policies that affect your online privacy. You should also share your knowledge and experience with others, especially with those who may be more vulnerable or less aware of the online privacy issues. You can educate yourself and others by reading, watching, listening, or attending reliable and reputable sources of information, such as blogs, podcasts, videos, webinars, or courses.
Malware Surgeon
Privacy online has nothing to do with being cyber aware. You can have the craziest PW, I phish you and you will type your pw! The privacy comes if I phish you on your netflix email or on your email that you use for all the things. Being private also does not stop anyone with enough will to hack you and being poor in how one manage ones exposure on Internet does not mean one will get hacked. So all in all, we need to expose these concepts clearly to the “non geek” world and be clear enough so that anyone can understand the diference between privacy and cyber security!