Your digital privacy should be regarded as a right, as opposed to a privilege. The internet is a fact of modern life, and a daily – if not hourly – factor in both our personal and professional lives; it is also a frontier for bad actors, fraudulent behaviour and identity-based crime risk. Online safety can be a thorny and multifaceted subject, but it doesn’t need to be a difficult one; this guide aims to prove that.
Here, you’re going to discover some practical ways to strengthen your digital privacy in everyday life, from securing your online accounts to reducing the potential for tracking. These new habits will improve your online safety in Canada’s increasingly connected digital environment – protecting you from data breaches, online theft and more.
Use Strong Passwords and Enable Multi-Factor Authentication
The most common way in which Canadians engage with online safety is through that of passwords and online account management. Practically every digital service requires online registration, including the designation of an account password; the strength of this password dictates the safety of your information within that account.
Weak or reused passwords remain one of the biggest cybersecurity risks writ large. Passwords with small character numbers are easier to brute-force than passwords of 12 characters or more; a common strategy for producing an easy-to-remember, hard-to-crack password is to chain four random words together. Multi-factor authentication is worth enabling too, to add another layer of protection when it comes to phishing scams.
Review App Permissions
All apps, websites and smart devices collect personal data as a matter of course – and often beyond what users expect. This data can be used to track your movements on and between apps, as well as on the broader internet, allowing companies to develop a picture of you as a user; this creates saleable information, also infringing on your expectations of privacy. You can often opt out of such data collection via privacy settings buried in app menus, or account settings.
Browse More Privately
Your online habits are not just tracked through apps and programmes. Advertisers, websites and data brokers also track your digital browsing habits through cookies, fingerprinting and location data. These are not as easy to opt out of, particularly where websites use predatory permission screens to require full consent for full cookie tracking.
However, there are ways to block that tracking altogether. VPNs can be useful for putting a layer of obfuscation between data brokers and your home IP address; using the Tor browser takes this to its logical conclusion, allowing you to browse through layers of proxy servers that insulate you from predatory tracking, reducing your digital footprint altogether.
Be Cautious With Public Wi-Fi
As a final note, where you browse from in the real world is naturally a consideration when it comes to online safety. Unless you commit fully to using a privacy-focused browser, you are at the mercy of the internet connection you make; public Wi-Fi networks are often unsecured, opening the door to infiltration from bad actors posted on the same network.
