What steps can you take to make sure you have control of your online information? Why is it important to lock privacy settings and set strong passwords?
I've been a long advocate of undersharing online, working from the position that there are certain boxes that can't be re-shut; anything that makes it online should be assumed to be permanently online, given the propensity for accelerative spread and the effortlessness it takes to share copies of any media.
Controlling information, in my estimation, is less about being invisible online (possible but increasingly difficult to accomplish) and more about being vigilantly intentional about everything that goes online. I tend to agonize over most of the Tweets I send out, even the most innocuous or seemingly inoffensive of them, because it becomes an exercise in frustration to agonize over how a future reader might interpret what was said.
Google's Be Internet Awesome as a standalone digital literacy and citizenship program provides recommendations for teachers and parents to use to keep kids safe online through mindful choices when it comes to personal information and behaviour. Responsible communication is the cornerstone to this practice, specifically around who you share with as well as what you share. There are game modules within the program to teach students about "locking up" personal details about themselves, their families and their friends. The program is clearly seeking a "critical mass" as a tipping point to smart behaviour online. There are modules about recognizing fake news or claims (as well as would-be phishing scams), password hygiene (and the need to change your password even when it's strong), and importantly, what to do if something does go wrong online. This latter piece is helpful to encourage kids to connect with the trusted adults in their life so they don't feel alone in the maelstrom of online chaos were they to misstep online.
When sharing things online, I try to keep my criteria pretty simple:
The Grandma rule: nothing goes online from me that I wouldn't want my grandmother reading. She was so sensitive and it would have killed me to explain poor behaviour or harsh opinions to her.
Never the same password twice: There was a time, in the late 90s as the rest of the world was starting to come online, that I used the same password for everything. Not now. I don't have a single password under 10 characters and never use the same one twice. A password manager is essential for this in order to keep everything straight in my head.
A Passphrase is superior: Given the time it takes the fastest machines to crack through passwords with brute-force attacks, the use of a password (even one with symbols and alphanumeric characters) is risky. For example, a password like coconuts is more or less instantly guessable by a computer, but Iboughtabagofcoconuts is exponentially harder to guess (800 quadrillion years by brute force).
Remember the reach paradox. I don't know if it's actually called the "reach paradox," but I'm going to refer to it as that. There's so much noise already out there on the internet that it can seem a lot like anything you say or do might be lost in the noise. But it's forever, and it only takes one incident for something posted online (permanently posted online!) to suddenly reach an audience of thousands or millions of people. Treat everything you post like it has infinite reach and be intentional of what you post.
Google yourself. Just try it as a starting point. That will help you see what's already out there without really connecting the dots to alternate personas or usernames you have out there. The tiered level of connections to things out there doesn't take a lot of work if you have public-facing profiles on any social media or other online accounts.
Clear your cache and cookies. And while you're at it, use a privacy-focussed browser like Firefox or a non-tracking search engine like Duckduckgo that helps to set up privacy fences to stop third-party cookies. Install them and ramp up the privacy option to maximum.
Use a VPN. But be careful even then. You might be hiding your browsing history from your internet service provider, but you're not necessarily hiding your data from the VPN provider.
Delete Facebook. I mean, this is more of an opinion that a strategy, but I can't think of a company less deserving of all of our personal information and more irresponsible with what we post online. In being connected to others across countless digital social nodes, there's no telling how far your personal information might travel (and, what you might be exposed to along the way).
I recognize that at the time of writing, this blog post is hosted at a blog with a URL that contains my full name. That's something I've done deliberately because I'm following the Grandma rule. I'd be thrilled if she let me know that she was reading this.
Hi Grandma!
Question : Do you have other strategies for locking down your personal information? What can we tell students looking for advice on how to stay safe and protected while maintaining a social following online?
References
“Be Internet Awesome.” Google, Google, beinternetawesome.withgoogle.com/en_us/. Accessed 15 July 2021.
How Secure Is My Password?, Security.org, 15 Mar. 2021, howsecureismypassword.net/. Accessed 15 July 2021.
Tobi
Hey Christian,
Great tips you have there! I try and follow many of them myself, although I have yet to delete my Facebook because it helps me keep in touch with a lot of colleagues. What I have done, however, is made myself extremely hard to find. Rather than having my full name available, I set my first as "To" and last as "Bi." It's still me, you just have to search harder, and even then, my security options are set as high as possible. One tip that I follow and actually got from reading a book written by Nev Schulman (who created the MTV show Catfish) is to never use the same social media handle. This is what…