10 Easy Steps to Maximize Privacy

Photo source: Ruth Suehle for opensourceway.com via flickr.com/ photo cropped from original

We live in a world of constant technology use and lots of sharing. Technology has made it easier for families, friends, co-workers, and long-lost classmates to connect, and our online lives are just as important to us as our offline ones. But what you share doesn’t always stay within those circles and can be shared much more broadly than expected. Sometimes our technology gets out of our control.

So what can you do? Here are some quick ways to ensure that your tech use and sharing is done a little bit more safely. Although these may sound simple, these are some of the easiest things to forget to do and some of the easiest ways to lose control and privacy. 

1.    Log out of accounts and apps
Yeah, this is kind of duh advice, but you’d be surprised at how many people forget to log out of their accounts. They only realize they forgot when someone else posts something outrageous on their Timeline or feed. Logging out of your account is even more important if you’re using someone else’s device. Uncheck the “keep me logged in” feature and don’t allow the web browser to remember your password to automatically log you in. Doing so will make it easy for anyone to pick up your computer, tablet or smartphone, and post away, pretending to be you. 

2.    Use strong passwords
Use passwords to prevent strangers, parents (if you have nosy parents), and children (if you have nosy children) from accessing your accounts. Don't use the same password for more than one account, a password that someone who knows you can easily guess, or a one-word password that can be easily cracked. Create a password system so that you use unique passwords only you will know. 

3.    Review privacy settings
Review the privacy settings on all your online accounts, particularly your social media ones. Most sites allow users to limit what others see, whether it’s status updates or profile information. Don’t forget that it’s more than just social networks like Facebook or Twitter that have privacy settings. Most online accounts, such as Amazon, allow you to limit who can see your profile information. 

4.    Minimize location sharing
Smart phones have GPS location capability and you could be sharing your location without even knowing it. You can control which app has access to your location by turning off that option through your smart phone. (Most phones have location privacy options in the settings.) Some social network sites also allow you to manage your location privacy through the site’s privacy settings. 

5.    Don’t include location coordinates in your pictures
Did you know that when you take a picture on your smart phone, you could inadvertently share your location as well? That means that the selfie you just posted and uploaded online could contain your exact GPS coordinates. You can turn off that capability through the privacy setting on your camera app. Don’t forget that even if you turned off the location option for your camera app, the photo sharing app that you’re using may share your location—so turn off the location option for the app as well. 

6.    Be thoughtful about connecting social media accounts
Yeah, you can connect your Instagram to your Facebook or your Foursquare account to other social networks—and yeah, that may make it easier to update them all with just one click. But that also means that a lot more people will have access to lots of info about you. It also makes it more difficult to lock down your privacy. So be thoughtful about which social media accounts you connect. 

7.    Be careful when using free wireless networks
Free internet is always awesome. But you pay for it by being more vulnerable to risks. Using open wireless networks at your local coffee shop or sandwich shop can leave you susceptible to hackers accessing your private information. If you’re going to check bank accounts, buy something where you have to give your credit card information, or do anything sensitive, wait until you are back on a secure network. And if your personal wireless network doesn’t have a password on it, for the love of any deity, put a password on it!

8.    Use HTTPS everywhere
Not all websites are created equal. Some sites are more vulnerable to viruses, which makes your computer/tablet more vulnerable. However, some sites have a secure version – you can tell by looking at the link in the URL address bar. If it starts with https, it’s a secure page vs. http, which is just a normal page. (The next time you’re checking your bank account or buying something online, check out the address bar; it'll probably be green.) The easiest way to ensure that you’re using the secure page whenever you can is to download the HTTPS-everywhere browser add-in. Each time you go to a site, it’ll try to open the secure (https) site rather than the normal one. If the site doesn’t have a secure page, it’ll default to the normal page. 

9.    Use Incognito, Private Browsing, or InPrivate Browsing
Currently, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Microsoft Explorer allow you to browse privately. Basically, privately browsing means that someone can’t open your web browser after you’ve used it and go through the history to see what you’ve been up to. Browsing privately is safer if you’re using a friend’s computer or tablet or are on a public computer. Keep in mind though that you have to close the browser to erase your history. If you leave it open, users after you can still see your browsing history.

10.    Use more than one email address
Email addresses are free, so have as many as you want! You can use one specific email address with a super strong password for your banking and shopping. Use another email for all the junk mail and accounts you have to create in order to use a particular web service. You could even consider using different email addresses for different social media accounts. Using different emails for different accounts is safer because if someone guesses one of your email + password combo, they don’t have access to all your accounts. You can even go one step further and download a service that “masks” your account address, so that you’re never using your actual email address. 

Tips for Online Safety and Privacy

Facebook Removes Search By Name Option

Last week, Facebook announced that they were removing the “Who Can Look Up My Timeline By Name” option for their users. Since then we have been contacted by many concerned advocates about what removing this feature means for survivors, many of whom use Facebook to stay connected with friends and family but whose privacy from their abusers and stalkers is equally important.

When Facebook first told us they were planning to make this change, we expressed that this feature is one method some survivors use to control their privacy. Opting out of being searchable by name was one way in which survivors could use to keep an abuser or stalker from finding their timeline/account. 

However, Facebook explained, and we agree (because we’ve known this for a while too), that this feature gave a false sense of privacy, since even if this feature was activated, people can still be found in other ways. Some of those ways include:

• Mutual friends. If you have mutual friends, unless you choose to not allow mutual friends to see your activity, many people can be found that way. Moreover, even if they have chosen to not allow friends of friends to see their activity, we have heard of many survivors whose mutual friends simply shared the information with their abuser or other people. 

• Username/User ID. If someone knew your exact username or userID, they can find you that way. 

• Graph Search. Graph search is a new searching option that Facebook has been slowly rolling out, and this type of search will make anyone searchable, even if they have selected that they don’t want to be found by name. Unlike personal demographics information, graph search reveals users based on things they like or things their friends like and other demographics information about the user that public. So, for example, if you like a particular restaurant, live in Albuquerque, NM, someone can do a search for “People who like [restaurant] in [city]” and find all the people who have liked it. 

Although we are disappointed that the option to be searched by name has been removed, the safest course for survivors and advocates is to educate themselves about how they can be found on Facebook regardless of privacy settings. Users should know what kinds of information will always be public, understand how widely information can be shared online, and determine what they will share based on their own privacy risks. The reality is that social media always has, and always will, move toward a model of sharing and openness; even if something is private now, it may not always be so. 

In light if that, it is important to know that these activities/information will always be public on Facebook:

• Your name, profile picture, your cover photo, your username and user ID, and any networks you belong to.

• Any public pictures or posts you like or comment on. For example, if you like or commented on a picture or a post where the original author set that picture or post to public, the fact that you liked it or your comment will be public. 

There are a few things that survivors can do to maximize their privacy.

• Check out the “view as” option, to see what someone can see when they look at your page, whether it’s as a friend, a friend of a friend, or the public. 

• Review your timeline by going back to previous posts on your timeline and change who can see those posts. You can even delete old posts. 

• Going forward, limit what you share by choosing only friends. You can even go further and create lists that will limit exactly who see the specific information you are sharing. 

• Take a look at Safety Net’s handout on Facebook Privacy for more privacy tips. 

As Facebook continues to change their privacy settings and introduce new features to their users, it is critical that survivors and advocates understand those changes and how it affects the personal information they share on Facebook. Facebook allows users to delete old posts or pictures, so it might be time to do your own Facebook audit and clean up your timeline.