Apple might be able to fight back even against the FBI asking for a backdoor into your iPhone, but that doesn’t mean you should fully rely on them to protect your privacy. It’s up to us to practice due diligence and get the best apps to guard our data – like the following ones, for instance.
Clean Up Your Social Media
Facebook, Twitter, Google, and other tech giants already keep enough tabs on you as it is. But are you aware how many other apps connected to your accounts have access to your info? MyPermissions lets you know all about it in one clean interface. See which apps know about your location, which can take a peek at your inbox and contacts, and which can outright access all of it. Then, selectively disable those permissions as you see fit. As the clever marketing on their website asks: “Why should my health insurance access my fitness data?!” Why indeed. Special mention to Jumbo as well. If you use social media, you may know what a pain it is to find any privacy settings on those platforms. Jumbo automatically sets every privacy-related setting to the max on your accounts in just a few taps, saving you many headaches. And while we’re on the topic of who has access to your data…
Try a Good VPN
Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) might sound like something best left to security experts or tinfoil hat enthusiasts, but make no mistake. Over 1.1 billion people around the world use a VPN to safeguard their data from the myriad of third parties looking to get their share:
- Internet service providers that sell their customers’ data for a profit
- Government agencies (like the NSA) that spy on their citizens
- Hackers that hover like flies around free public Wi-Fi, among other dangers
VPNs encrypt (i.e. obfuscate) all network traffic passing through your iPhone or tablet – meaning nobody can see what you do or say online. Moreover, using a VPN means your real IP address (and by extension, your physical location) is hidden behind the VPN server’s own IP. Random strangers online may not care where you live, but we bet you don’t care to find out either. A neat little benefit of switching your IP with a server in another country is that you can access geo-blocked content (like copyrighted YouTube music or Netflix shows unavailable in your area). It can be difficult to choose one, but at least you can whittle the numbers down by avoiding the “free” ones on the AppStore. And there are several good reasons why. If you’re looking for a recommendation, NordVPN has excellent reviews for their sturdy, privacy-focused features. It is also one of the few VPNs that can still unblock Netflix. Like any top-tier VPN provider, it has a no-logs policy, meaning it can’t offer any personal data to governments that come knocking. Not that the company could, since it is based in Panama – a country with a high degree of Internet freedom that’s well outside the influence of the NSA and similar agencies.
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Encrypted Email
Speaking of online espionage – wouldn’t it be nice if Google or its partners didn’t read through your inbox? Or you didn’t wake up one day needing to change your email password (and verify that your accounts weren’t compromised) like 3 billion Yahoo! users had to do? If you’re like most people and don’t enjoy strangers, the government or cyber criminals sifting through your emails, then try ProtonMail. Your emails are stored on the Switzerland-based provider’s servers in an encrypted form, meaning that not even ProtonMail can read them without your password. Even with the impossibly slim chance that their servers are compromised, all that the hackers would see is gibberish. Now, your email may be safe and sound – but ProtonMail can’t protect your other accounts from the peril of weak passwords.
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Password Management
In a statement that surprises absolutely no one, 80% of hacking incidents happen because of weak or re-used passwords. Hopefully your account login isn’t “password” – but just in case it is, it might be time to look into a password manager like LastPass or one of these other choices. They’ll help you create strong, randomized passwords that are impossible to guess (i.e. “brute force”) by hackers. All of them will be stored in an encrypted format on your system, locked behind a master password, which you should be very careful not to lose. A cool advantage to using a password manager is that you can’t fall for login-based phishing scams. Basically, cyber criminals create fake websites that look almost exactly like the real thing and try to trick you into logging in to the faux-service to siphon your very genuine details. This is usually under the guise of having to correct some of your account information or similar sounding reasons and usually prompts a sense of urgency. In any case, the password manager detects that it’s not on the right website and will refuse to log in, even if to you the website looks fine down to the link. Finally, there’s one other avenue where your privacy could be at risk, and that’s through chat apps.
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Instant Messaging
At this point everybody is aware of Facebook’s poor relationship with privacy, which is a possible understatement of the century. Despite offering end-to-end encryption and allowing you to talk to your friends that have Android – WhatsApp is still owned by the tech giant. You’ll need a messaging app that isn’t compromised by the big F. Signal, for example, was recommended by Edward Snowden for its use of end-to-end encryption to shield your messages from unwanted eyes. WhatsApp does so as well, but Facebook scans through other metadata about you. Signal hides basically all of it, including who sent the message. Moreover, its open-source nature lets anybody on the Internet peek at the code to see if it’s as secure as they make it out to be. And there we go. You may not live in a James Bond movie, but at least you’re prepared to deal with all that spying.
