It seems like we’re under attack from all directions — online, that is. Facebook is giving away your profile data, and an app from the fitness company Under Armour wasn’t strong enough to prevent the theft of 150 million customer files. Even the City of Atlanta was held hostage by a ransomware attack that crippled its municipal computer networks.
About the only things you can’t find online are privacy and security. It’s enough to make Internet users feel helpless. But, in fact, there are many things you can do to keep at least some of your secrets safe. Here are a few of my favorites:
Social networks
Don’t let just anyone read your Facebook postings. The social network’s Privacy Checkup feature lets you limit who can see your postings and your personal profile information, like date of birth and phone number. You should also check the apps that you’ve given access to your Facebook account, to make sure they’re not collecting too much data about you.
You can also protect your privacy on the fly. With each new Facebook post, you can choose whether it will be visible only to your family, all your Facebook friends, or all 2 billion Facebook users.
Of course, Facebook itself tracks everything you post. Its tracking cookies follow us as we visit thousands of other websites. Free programs such as Ghostery let you block these tracking cookies.
On Twitter, all tweets are “public’’ by default. Anyone can see them, and they appear in Google searches. But there’s a setting to make all of your tweets private, so only your online friends can read them, and Google will no longer be able to index them.
And what if you’ve posted a tweet that you now regret? You can delete it from Twitter, and stop Google from showing it, through its “remove outdated content’’ service, which deletes Internet materials that have been modified or deleted. Just enter the Twitter address of the tweet to make it go away.
Facebook and Twitter both let you review copies of your postings. You can delete them one at a time, or your entire account. But before you do, download an archive of everything you’ve posted, so you don’t lose those vacation photos.
Of course, the best defense is to use all social networks sparingly and to be very careful about what you post. What Facebook and Twitter don’t know can’t hurt you.
Google remembers your Internet searches, favorite YouTube videos, even the places you visited while carrying a GPS-enabled phone. You’ll find it all on a page called Google Dashboard. There you can delete certain things, say the record of your Web searches, but retain others, like those YouTube favorites.
Of course, you don’t have to use your real identity on Google. Consider creating an anonymous account. Google will keep right on tracking your actions, but it won’t know it’s you.
Smartphones
Careful with those apps. Some of them want to know too much. Don’t install apps that have few other users. Check online to see if others have had problems with the app, and don’t choose apps that want more info than you’re comfortable sharing. Do they really need to know your location all day long, or everyone in your address book? You can refuse to share such information.
And delete apps you no longer use. They may still be collecting your data.
You can control which apps get location data, and when. Go to the Settings menu to turn on the location feature for those that absolutely need it, and kill it for those that don’t. Apple phones have a nice feature that lets you turn on location-tracking only when an app is in use, and not when it’s sitting idle.
And beware of those insecure public Wi-Fi hot spots. Use them for streaming music or reading the news, but not for sensitive activities like online banking. For that, switch to your phone’s 4G network. It’s safer.
Of course, phones get lost and stolen. But Apple and Android phones offer software to automatically back up apps and files. Make sure it’s switched on.
Also, lock down the phone to keep the thieves from taking a peek at your data. You’ve got plenty of locking options these days: a PIN code, your fingerprint, even facial recognition.
Both Apple and Android phones have cloud-based services you can access from any Internet browser to pinpoint the location of a lost or stolen phone. With any luck you’ll soon get it back. But if the phone is well and truly gone, these phone-finding sites offer you the option of remotely deleting all data from your missing device.
Personal computers
Keep antimalware programs up to date. They’re not perfect, but they’ll intercept many viruses, Trojans, and ransomware attacks.
And speaking of ransomware attacks, like the one that recently crippled Atlanta’s city government, the best defense is to follow the oldest computer security tip of them all: Regularly back up all of your critical files. Then, if ransomware strikes, you can just wipe the device and restore your backed-up files.
But your backup shouldn’t be directly connected to your computer. Use a cloud-based service that won’t be infected along with your local device. If you don’t trust the cloud, you can back up your files on an external hard drive. But disconnect the drive after each backup. If it stays plugged in, a ransomware program can wreck the backup, as well.
Any password that’s easy to remember is also easy to crack. So use tougher passwords, along with a password manager program like LastPass or 1Password to remember them for you. These programs, available for smartphones as well as PCs, will generate super-complex passwords and store them for future use.
Hiawatha Bray can be reached at hiawatha.bray@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @GlobeTechLab.
