 Digital privacy. 10 questions to ask yourself. To be honest, there is no way to protect your privacy 100%. There are, however, steps you can take to better protect your privacy. Since we are interconnected in our communication, we can only keep our contact safe by protecting our own privacy. This includes knowing and controlling how our information is being collected and shared. Our personal information is private and should not be shared unknowingly. To determine if you protect your personal information well, here are 10 questions to ask yourself. 1. Have you ever noticed an ad following you from site to site? Websites often run scripts and load content from other sites and share your information with other sites without your knowledge. An example of this is when an ad follows you from site to site. You can control the personal information that websites see when you're browsing online by using a browser plugin, such as Cookie Auto Delete, Privacy Badger, HTTPS Everywhere, NoScript, and UBlock Origin. 2. Have you had a website ask you to accept its cookies? Websites often collect private information by asking users to accept cookies. To prevent this, make sure to delete unwanted cookies. You can also use private browsing, which makes sure that cookies are automatically deleted when the session is closed. 3. Do you frequently make new online accounts? Every time you create an account, you can trust your private information to more people. To keep your information safe, create new passwords for each site and use a password manager to keep track. This makes it less likely that if one account is compromised, your other accounts are compromised as well. Additionally, you can create a separate email address for online accounts. 4. Have you ever had an app ask for your permission to access your contact list, photo gallery, or other unnecessary information? Before you install an app, it's a good idea to make sure you need the app. If you do, make sure that the permissions the app asks for are necessary for the app to function. If the permissions are not necessary, be cautious about installing it. The app could knowingly or unknowingly share this information. In addition, make sure to delete any unnecessary apps from your phone and carefully manage permissions for apps currently on your phone. 5. Have you confirmed that the video and messaging platforms that you use are secure? If you communicate sensitive information over unsecured platforms, you could possibly be giving away that information unknowingly. Even chats with friends and family could be sources of sensitive information. Make sure that you use secure platforms, especially when you handle sensitive information. Here are several examples of secure platforms. Signal, Jitsi, and Google Meet. 6. Have you checked your geolocation settings? Keeping your geolocation settings on on your phone location, camera, delivery apps, and social media is convenient. However, you make yourself relatively easy to track, potentially putting yourself and loved ones at risk. To reduce the risk of being tracked, review your camera and app geotagging functions and turn them off whenever you can. Be mindful of mentioning your location or travel plans in public posts. 7. Have you ever CC'd a group of people? When sending an email to a group of people, it's common to use CC. The risk with using CC is that anyone with a compromised email account could be used to target email contacts into opening a malicious email. To protect the privacy of your contacts, it is better to use BCC when sending an email to a group. 8. Have you ever shared details such as your home address or phone number on your social media profile? Be mindful of the information that you share on your social media, especially if it is personal information that could be used to track and locate you. Try to avoid providing information that could be used to target you, such as addresses, phone numbers, or personal email addresses. 9. Have you checked your social media settings? Social media settings are often set to public by default, meaning anyone can see your profile and posts. Content shared on social media is often personal and can be used for malicious purposes. To prevent this from happening, make sure your privacy settings are set appropriately and you know who is in your contact list. 10. Have you ever used unsecured public Wi-Fi networks? Public Wi-Fi networks are often easily accessible and convenient. However, because they are unsecured, it can put your web traffic connected to the network at risk. If it is absolutely necessary to connect to a public Wi-Fi network, use a VPN.