Data leaks happen once every few months at least. Millions of users can have their phone number, address, and Social Security Number smeared across the internet in a matter of seconds. Your online browsing behavior is also sold legally by tech companies to the highest bidder. Ever seen an ad that is a little too specific? Most major tech companies rely on some form of data harvesting for revenue.

As consumers, should we do anything? Can we do anything? The answer to both of these questions is resoundingly ‘yes.’ By using services geared towards privacy, we can jointly prevent both sources of danger to our private information – that is, data leaks and data harvesting.

In this article, I will give a brief synopsis of data exploitation, and I will subsequently describe three different levels of increasing security we can do based on technical expertise.

Data Leaks

Data leaks involving the data of millions of users happen so frequently that we almost forget about them. Each of the 15 top data breaches leaked the credit card numbers, emails, and IP addresses of hundreds of millions of people. Many of the names on the list are household names like LinkedIn, Yahoo, and Equifax. These are only the known leaks. The number of currently undiscovered leaks can only be guessed. You can check whether your email or phone number has popped up somewhere through Have I Been Pwned?.

These leaks result in consequences for the consumer if left unaddressed. Users who share the same password between multiple accounts can be targeted immediately, and these users can easily become victims of bank fraud and identity theft. Additionally, the more platforms that you use, the more likely that one of those platforms will eventually leak your data. For this reason, it is (Read more...)