Summary
This post is an overview of internet privacy and best practices. I believe privacy is a right we all have.
Internet privacy seems to become increasingly more difficult to obtain as technology is ingrained in our everyday lives. It is not uncommon for the services we all rely on to harvest our personal information. In todays online age it is up to the user to take back their privacy.
Private Services
To resolve this and regain privacy it is possible to use alternative services that respect the privacy of the user. Such services can be found using this resource. This website allows users to find alternatives to popular but invasive services such as: social media platforms, maps, and messaging.
To reduce the risk of personal data being harvested always try to replace your current services with those that are “open source”. Open source services are often more privacy respecting as they are developed through the community. Open source projects allow anyone to directly view the code meaning they can verify all functionalities.
Device Settings
Within many devices and services it is possible to remove excessive tracking and profiling by toggling specific privacy settings. These settings and toggles can be found in the “privacy” section of most devices. It is a great idea to go through all of these settings manually and disable functions that are unneeded.
One such example of this is “optional telemetry”. Optional telemetry sends more data than required back to the company that hosts the service or manufacture the device. Settings like this should most often be disabled as users have nothing to gain yet potentially lose privacy.
User Accounts
Accounts for unused services should be deleted as they may contain personal information. Deleting these unused accounts reduces the amount of sources from which someone can gather information on you.
The best strategy for deleting unused or forgotten accounts is to view your email inbox and search for terms like “sign up”, “account” , or “welcome”. These terms will likely find emails relating to account signups. Be sure to go through them all and delete them.