ELLECANADA.COM 93
PRIVATE
ACCESS ONLY
HERE ARE A FEW WAYS
TO T A K E B A CK
SOME CONTROL
OVER YOUR
PERSONAL DATA.
Choose devices and apps
carefully. Dr. Ann Cavoukian
personally favours Apple devices
because they have stronger
privacy protection. With any given
app, you don’t know what will hap-
pen with your personal data, so
ask yourself if you need it enough
to accept the risks.
Switch to sites that guard pri-
vacy. Wary of Google knowing all?
DuckDuckGo is a privacy-focused
rival search engine that doesn’t
track you and sells nothing to
advertisers.
Check permissions. Which apps
are tracking your location at all
times? Or seeing your contacts,
getting into your calendar and
accessing your camera or mic?
Review your settings and revoke
permissions you’re not cool with.
Set up device encryption.
If you do only one thing, it should
be this, advises Brenda McPhail.
Encryption makes your phone
data readable only when your
device is unlocked. Look for
device-specific how-tos online.
times, spying is done by getting into, say,
a victim’s Apple iCloud account. “These
apps, and what they enable people to
do, are already illegal, but there’s a lack
of enforcement,” says Cynthia Khoo, a
research fellow at the Citizen Lab who
worked on the stalkerware report.
Privacy experts say that Canadian
laws, such as the Personal Information
Protection and Electronic Documents
Act (PIPEDA), lack teeth and desperately
need updating. “Our privacy laws were
made at a time when we were worried
about keeping files safe in locked cab-
inets,” explains McPhail.
But as governments lag behind, we’re
living in the age of “surveillance capital-
i sm”— a ter m coi ned by H a r v a rd Bu si nes s
School professor emerita Shoshana Zuboff
to describe how corporations are mining
the human experience to not only make
money but also predict and manipulate our
behaviour. It may sound abstract, but it’s
already happening: Last year, news broke
that Cambridge Analytica, a political
consulting firm that has done work for the
Trump campaign, harvested personal info
from up to 87 million Facebook profiles
to design micro-targeted ads—allegedly
for election meddling. How w did the
company hoover up so much data? By
making a seemingly innocent Facebook
app: a personality quiz.
So, short of becoming a neo-Luddite,
what’s the solution? “It’s not realistic to tell
people to simply give up these services,”
says Khoo. “We have to put pressure on
companies to do the right thing and put
pressure on regulators and politicians to
enforce the laws—putting the onus to
act where it belongs.” It’s possible: While
Canadians wait for PIPEDA to be over-
hauled, last spring the E.U. implemented
the world’s strictest data privacy laws,
known as the General Data Protection
Regulation (GDPR). But until everyone
else catches up? You’d be wise to use your
gadgets with your own eyes wide open.