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Collecting the articles for the section And in the big bad world… continues all
week, day and night so to speak. If I come across an article that might be of
interest, I put the link in the Pocket app. And on Friday morning, when I write
the blog, I pull those articles out again, read them and decide if they can
come along.
Occasionally I also put an article for private use in
Pocket. And admittedly, sometimes I keep some pretty crazy articles, thinking:
this is something you never think about, but maybe I can learn something from
it. And that's how the article entitled How
to clean your toaster the right way from lifehacker.com ended up there.
That article has been serving as a bookmark in Pocket for a long time: when I arrive
down there, I know I'm done with the articles for the blog.
This week I finally read that article. And actually learned
nothing new. But as with so many things in daily life, my inner voice also
asked: hey, isn't that a topic for the blog? Shouldn't you write something
about cleaning your digital life and keeping it tidy? It certainly benefits
from maintenance. Do you remember your whereabouts on the internet? You are
vulnerable in all those places and that is why it is important to maintain
control over them.
Start with a simple exercise: google yourself. That's fun
and educational to do, and it's also a bit like bringing out the box with old
photos (yes you young people, in the old days one only had photos on paper and
you put them in an album or in a box). Doing so, I came across a publication
from 2006 that I contributed to, I found a namesake in the south of France (who
undoubtedly mispronounces his own first and last name) and a bunch of photos.
So far nothing shocking. But maybe you come across something that you want to take
care of.
An important question with regard to your digital life
is: who can access what, what are 'they' allowed to know about you? I've talked
about permissions for apps on mobile devices before here. In Android, you get a
good insight into which permissions there are and to which apps you have
assigned them. Do you regret anything? Then tap on that app and simply strip it
of its permissions. In addition, Android nowadays has a nice mechanism: apps
that have not been used for a long time automatically lose their permissions.
On Apple devices, go to Settings/Privacy to see which permissions have been
granted to which apps. Here too you can easily turn them on or off.
And then, of course, there are the infamous cookies. I
know, we tend to click 'accept all' to move forward quickly. Sometimes you are
lucky – from a privacy point of view – and there is also a button 'decline
all'. But most of the time there is only a 'manage settings' button. When you arrive
at that page, all options are disabled by default (or they should be). You then
only have to click on 'save these settings', so you do not have to work the
list.
In the first tip, I used 'google' as a verb – I didn't
mean you have to use the search engine Google per se. If you want to better
protect your privacy, you can use search engines that don't track you, for
example startpage.com or duckduckgo.com. The latter also has the DuckDuckGo
Privacy Browser (Android and iOS).
Then a tip that I should follow myself: terminate
accounts that you have not used for a long time. Because through all those
accounts you are vulnerable – if someone hacks into the associated site, your
data may be out there. It is almost impossible to remember all the sites you
have an account for, because at some online stores you ordered something five
years ago and created an account for that. If you have had your password
manager help you with this, you can find it there. So go through the accounts
in your password manager and see which accounts can be deleted. If you can’t
quit your account on a site, you can always request that company to delete all
your data by invoking the GDPR (sorry, non-EU readers…).
Finally, take a critical look at your friends on social
media. Do you really know them all? If not, get rid of them. LinkedIn in
particular is sometimes used for social engineering: someone becomes friends
with you and then tries to get information from you in a devious way. I don't
use LinkedIn to get as many contacts as possible, but only accept new contacts
who work with us or who I've met before.
If you still have time after this, see if your toaster
could also use a cleaning.
Next week there will
be no Security (b)log.
This blog post has
been translated from Dutch to English by Google and edited by the author.
And in the big bad world…
This section contains
a selection of news articles I came across in the past week. Because the
original version of this blog post is aimed at readers in the Netherlands, it
contains some links to articles in Dutch. Where no language is indicated, the
article is in English.
- Ukraine is eagerly looking for hackers and security experts.
- Do they really need those people urgently.
- This lengthy 2017 article describes how Ukraine has been used by Russia for years as a testing ground for cyber attacks.
- they
will have to do without European cyber aid for a while. [IN DUTCH]
- those
European experts could do useful things. [IN
DUTCH]
- the
Dutch company, which housed a server that was used for attacks on Ukraine,
wants to share information with the police. [IN
DUTCH]
- ordinary cybercrime also continues over there.
- the privacy of Microsoft Teams, OneDrive and SharePoint has been examined.
- Certain
security cameras are recruited by botnets. [IN
DUTCH]
- the
police managed to lock up a bank help desk fraudster. [IN DUTCH]
- the
DDoS person, who attacked the Dutch Tax and Customs Administration, among
others, has been convicted by the court. [IN
DUTCH]
- Olympic athletes also have to worry about cybersecurity nowadays.
- shared bikes are stolen by swapping QR codes.
