DO I REALLY NEED TO BE WORRIED
ABOUT RUSSIA READING MY
FACEBOOK STATUS UPDATES?
Don't lose sleep over it, but it’s good to
know who has your data and what they
plan to do with it. Facebook‘s data
breaches and the Cambridge Analytica
scandal put 100 million users’ personal
info in the wrong hands. They now have
new security settings and lawsuits against
apps scraping your info. (Like Rankwave,
who promised to let you know what your
“Influencer Score” is – and also mined
your profile for data to sell to advertisers.)
To lower your risk, don’t take Facebook
quizzes no matter how harmless they seem,
always turn on two-factor authentication
and use an email rather than clicking
“login using Facebook” on other sites.WHAT ABOUT MY MESSAGES?
We send passwords, bank details and vent
about our bosses over message, so privacy
should be a huge concern. You want a
service with end-to-end encryption (E2EE).
This means while a message is in transit, its
contents are jumbled and unreadable to
anyone – including the app itself – other
than the intended recipient’s device.
iMessage has E2EE (regular text or the
green bubble doesn’t), as do WhatsApp,
FB’s Messenger and Signal. Instagram
DMs may be by 2020.HOW SHOULD I BE STORING
MY PASSWORDS?
A departure from the most common
password in Australia, which is “123456”,
security experts recommend at least 16
characters: a random mix of numbers,
symbols, uppercase and lowercase letters.
If that sounds difficult, try using symbols in
place of letters in words only you’ll
remember. You really should have a
different one for each site (or limit one
password to a few unrelated accounts), in
case there’s a data breach and your one
go-to password is exposed. Resist the urge
to keep them in the Notes app under
“Passwords”; use a password manager
instead. Dashlane, LastPass and even your
iCloud Keychain are useful tools for both
creating and storing passwords securely –
and you only need to remember one
password to log in. That said, we’re already
using fingerprints, iris scans and facial
recognition to get into our devices,
alongside authenticator apps and
password managers needing only a single
sign in, so it’s likely you’ll be able to forget
all about them in the next five years.HOW DO I ENSURE MY
CRYPTOCURRENCY FORTUNE
WON’T BE LOST IF I FORGET
MY LOGIN – OR DIE?
If you lose the password for your digital
wallet or don’t have access to the phone
number you’ve put down for two-step
authentication, you’re in trouble. Most
well-regarded Bitcoin wallets will
generate a “wallet recovery phrase” or
“seed phrase”, a random series of words
you should write down and keep safe
somewhere. It works like a saved copy of
your wallet, and all the cryptocurrency in
it. Use the recovery phrase, and you get
your Bitcoin back. If you have a healthy
crypto fortune (and want to avoid the
same fate of the Canadian crypto
company whose CEO died with the
password), you can arrange to pass it on
to your benefactor in a will – but only if
they know how to get to it. Talk to your
lawyer about the best way to securely
note down where you’ve put your wallet
backup information, should – heaven
forbid – anything happen to you.HOW DO I MAKE SURE I DON’T
GET SPAMMED WITH TARGETED
ADVERTISING BASED OFF MY
SEARCH HABITS?
We all know the feeling, but thankfully
tech companies are hearing our concerns:
Apple has doubled-down on its privacy
commitment with Intelligent Tracking
Prevention, which aims to limit who can
track your activity across different sites on
mobile and desktop versions of Safari.
Setting your default search engine to one
such as DuckDuckGo (which doesn’t
collect any data from you when you run a
search), using an ad-blocker like Ghostery
and turning off targeted ads in your
Facebook settings (under “ad
preferences” in “privacy shortcuts”) are all
ways to avoid being stalked by those
Chloé boots you hovered over for a little
too long last week – until you’re fully
committed to your purchase, that is. ETECHONLINE SECURITY
AND PRIVACY ARE
HOT-BUTTON ISSUES
RIGHT NOW.
TECH EXPERT AND
EDITOR OF JUNKEE,
RAE JOHNSTON,
ANSWERS OUR
MOST PRESSING
QUESTIONSTECH
HI,
PHOTOGRAPHY BY
ASHLEY ARMITAGE
CULTURE