Have you ever
thought about who reads your emails? No one beside you? I wouldn’t be so sure. If you use email service like Gmail or Outlook
365, the answer is kind of obvious. Even if you delete an email the moment you
read it, it doesn’t mean there is no copy of it
on some server. All biggest email services, such as Google, Yahoo, Apple,
Microsoft, are now Cloud-based, so in order to be able to access it from any
device anywhere at any time there have to be copies. Any email you send can
also be inspected by a hosting
company, for example, for marketing purposes, or to find malware(malicious software).
Ok, so what can you do to prevent this action?
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Encryption
To become
invisible you need encryption, especially asymmetrical encryption. What’s that?
It’s all based on generating two
mathematically related keys: a private key that stays on your device and a public key, which you can post freely on the
Internet. What? My encryption key freely on the Internet? Don’t worry. The public key is used to encrypt data
and send it to you. Only you, with a small help of the private key,
can decrypt data sent to you. Ok, So how I encrypt my emails? The most popular
method is PGP, which stands for Pretty Good Privacy. It is not free, but hold
your horses, there is also a free version,
OpenPGP. There is also the third option, also free, GPG.
The keys are more
or less under your control, which means that their good management is also on
you. If you let a company perform encryption, then that company might also keep
your private keys and may also be compelled by court order to share them with
law enforcement or government agencies. That’s why you should use an application, which offer end-to-end
encryption. Your message stays unreadable until it reaches its recipient. Only
you and the recipient, not an app developer, an email service, have the key to decode it. It is quite
complicated, but luckily, there are some plugins for Chrome or Firefox that
make encryption easier(check out Mailvelope). Most popular apps like Messenger
or WhatsApp also have end-to-end encryption available.
Metadata
Unfortunately, life isn’t as easy as its sound.
Even if you encrypt your emails, a small part of
your message is still readable. It is information in the „To” and „From”
fields, your IP Address and the subject line. That might sound ok, most people
don’t bother about this information, but you’d be surprised how
much you can learn from this data. Example?
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It is really hard
to become invisible online. Luckily, with a few small steps, we can make it a lot of harder
for someone to find our personal info.
Do you think you
are invisible online?
What is your
opinion about NSA spying scandal?
Source:
https://www.wired.com/2017/02/famed-hacker-kevin-mitnick-shows-go-invisible-online/
Comments
Firstly, there are some free VPNs, which are limited in some
part, so if you would like to use VPN, you have to pay for it. It's about 10-20 PLN/month, but still you have to. So, in some part it is a prove that only 'paranoiac' uses it.
On the other hand, it is only 10-20 PLN/month. I think my privacy is worth much more. That's why I use VPN and don't think I'm paranoiac.
Despite the fact that I don't have to hide anything, I do it, because I'm aware.
Facebook is very interesting case. It keeps data from all of sites you've visited. This is really scary to me.
Of couse, VPN or TOR don't prevent spying by Facebook, but I believe it makes much harder to find out my personal info by many other people.
I'm using facebook, I'm using Google, so it's my fault.
When I was younger I was very attentive, what I was typing in an account, what I was publicing. But then, when there was a trend to have facebook I wasn't paying attention this much and now I really don't know where data about me are and if I have got a chance to get invisible now, when I'm older and a little bit smarter.
Still, I try to limit my activity and I tend to prefer privacy over convenience whenever possible.
NSA spying scandal wasn't a scandal for me. I don't consider myself a tinfoil hat crazy person but... "I KNEW IT ALL ALONG AND NOBODY BELIVD ME" ;) If you do your research and are aware of technological possibilities you can come to your own conclusions. Not the first scandal, not the last, still people don't care enough.
Of course there are many things that I would not do without having Internet but still I'm using Facebook just to keep contacts with school friends, and if I want to talk private I've always choose simple old face to face conversation instead of chat/Skype. I would never send private project or info through mail, Facebook, Skype - that's almost suicidal. One of the other things, most of us are using IP Telephony, especially Facebook/Skype are popular. But did someone ever thought that it can be used by Facebook/Skype in any way just to keep their quality of service at best rate ? :)
Using encryption and other data protection mechanisms is certainly a good way to improve your privacy on the Internet. But this could not be a substitute for exercising caution when giving out any personal information to others or sharing it through any services.
As a simple rule-of-thumb, you should treat all the data you put online as if they were publically available.
Using encryption and data protection mechanism can improve your privacy, so if you can use them - you should use this opportunity.
If you do your research and are aware of technological possibilities you can come to your own conclusions about that scandal. It wasn't the first major scandal in internet and it sure as hell won't be the last one. Still it didn't affect me in any matter yet i am concerned about that.