Internet Privacy Has You Scared Silly? Don’t Just Stand There – Do Something!
With the turning of the New Year, and the miserable weather Toronto gets every January, you might be forgiven for keeping your head nestled firmly under the covers, hoping cold would pass and you could go on, oblivious to the miseries outside the window, and to those lurking inside our computers, too.
Since last I wrote – which isn't really that long ago – we have witnessed the surfacing of data from an Imgur breach (of over a million usernames and passwords), an Ebay account leak that was thankfully patched within days (though still exposed sensitive details of user's purchase histories), and a California data analytics company that lost control of personal information for 120 million (yes, million. With an 'M') households. And then came the Spectre and Meltdown firestorm, which would make many users throw up their hands in disgust and despair. Many of you likely felt like this:
Why bother? Why even try, when huge companies employing millions of dollars of equipment and expertise cannot secure simple things like user names and passwords? In point of fact, popular tech 'blog' Gizmodo was in danger of wearing readers out with endless articles of 'who got hacked today'. So readers can be forgiven for wanting it all to simply go away.
Much like a toothache or health problem that is ignored, it doesn't simply go away. It usually gets worse; in this case, as more and more of our lives are carried out online, as we access services, keep track of our commitments, and socialize near and far, our activities are logged, tracked, analysed, and sold. Routinely without our knowledge, or consent.
What better time than the turning of the new year, to make a commitment to better online health? Start by securing your online accounts using strong passwords, and securing those passwords in a password manager. Check out the new (and fantastic) Security Planner for details, or sign up for a privacy class at your local library.
You can also hide your tracks online using a variety of tools, one of the best of which is the free Tor browser. Originally developed for military use, Tor is browser that bounces your signal through three voluntarily-hosted relays around the world, and wraps your communication in three layers of encryption to obscure it from anyone trying to look in on your activity. It remains one of the most powerful tools for internet anonymity available today.
And lucky for you, in celebration of Data Privacy Day, we are happy to host Tor developer Sukhbir Singh for a free workshop at Toronto Public Library. Mr Singh comes out of the University of Waterloo's Cryptography, Security, and Privacy (CrySP) group, and has been a software developer in the applications and community team of the Tor Project since 2012. He promises a hassle-free, no-question-left-unanswered, hand's on experience with Tor.
So come on out, and learn just how easy it is to use the internet privately! Register in advance if you can, and bring your own devices to get the most out of it.
Start 2018 by telling the Internet giants that they will have to work a lot harder to get what they want from you. See you there.
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