Spring-cleaning

Image from Pixabay

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.