With the advent of AI, different apps track, analyze, predict, and manipulate user behavior to train their machine-learning models. User data helps AI prepare new apps and programs to automate work operations and create generative APIs for different purposes. Throughout the process, AI collects all the data from the users, which puts privacy at risk.
Why Privacy Is Important in the Internet Age?
In the Internet age, privacy plays an important role in protecting users from cyberattacks and confidential data theft. It will help them connect and use the internet services without becoming victims of the black hats. They can complete a wide variety of online activities, including shopping, learning, communicating, and doing business, and they can share information without any fear of cyber attacks or data theft. It will protect users from financial fraud, scams, data breaches, and reputation damage due to sensitive information leakage. Users can trust the platforms that ensure data privacy and protect their online details from third parties and unsafe online actors.
At a more humane level, privacy and dignity are interconnected. It is linked to freedom, dignity, and self-determination. It prevents people`s thinking, personal decisions, choices, interests, opinions, and private acts from getting commodified, monetized, and exploited for commercial benefits. If privacy is intact, people can make independent decisions, sustain their unique identity, and prevent the commercialization of their ethical and normative concepts. It helps them live a life of dignity, self-respect, and confidence. This makes privacy highly important for every human being.
How Are Privacy And Data Protection Related?
Privacy and data protection are integral to each other in this digital age. To preserve privacy, one needs to ensure data protection. These are complementary subjects. If you leave one unattended, then the other will not remain intact.
Privacy is related to individuals’ right to what they think and do in their personal lives. It is related to how their data is used and shared with the others. Data protection is the act of securing personal data or mechanisms to maintain the privacy and secrecy of personal and sensitive information of an individual. For privacy and information protection, your privacy rights and preferences must be respected. No one must know, enter your personal information without your permission, or share anything about you without your approval.
In the present digital age, privacy and data protection have become more vital for every individual. In the market economy data is considered king as it decides market trends, supplies, and prices of goods and services. Big tech companies use IT systems and search engine mechanisms to collect individual data for different marketing purposes. As a result, everyone is living under constant surveillance. Privacy and personal data are exposed to great modern dangers.
How Privacy Is Breached?
A wide variety of tools and technologies are used to breach privacy. Digital devices use apps and programs to collect as much data as possible about the users. When you download new apps and programs on your PC they ask for you some permissions. These permissions allow the vendors to access your data and online activities. Using these permissions tech companies can access your microphones, track your online activities, and learn about your interests and choices. In the same way, IT service providers trace users’ digital footprints, online activities, and social media responses to learn more and more about them. In this process, they use a combination of online activities and program algorithms.
The biggest threat and challenge to privacy and data protection comes from cybercriminals and malicious actors who use malicious methods to steal sensitive information from individuals. Their purpose is also to promote illicit acts and harm the people. It includes scamming, spamming, stealing money, and damaging the reputation of their targets. These anti-social elements use spyware, browser hijackers, network hacking, and a wide variety of malicious software to track your online activities and steal your sensitive data. They infect your computers, laptops, mobiles, etc with viruses and malware. Malicious programs modify your files, interrupt your system functionalities, and provide cyber criminals access to your devices. The result is you end up losing all your data to the hands of black hats.
Data theft puts you in a highly vulnerable situation. It can derail your whole life, destroy your career, and expose you to a number of social insecurities. Hence it is highly important to secure your privacy and protect your data in this internet age. How do you do it is the next topic of this write-up.
How To Protect Online Privacy?
It is highly difficult to keep your privacy and data intact when you are using your digital device. The threat is lurking everywhere in the dark. You have to be alert and awake when using your online gadgets. You need to use best safety practices to keep your privacy intact and unbreachable. Here are some tips you use to protect your privacy from malicious actors:
Use Antivirus
Antivirus software is one the best tools to ensure your device’s safety from malicious programs. It detects malicious programs and keeps your system files safe from theft. It secures your network and blocks hijackers from entering your PC. If you visit any unsafe website or download files infected with viruses it gives you notifications. You will know the imminent danger and stop with it at once. Also, it scans files and apps in your device to detect harmful programs. If anything exists in the system it removes the anomaly at once and keeps your system clean and danger-free. Hence, using antivirus is a highly reliable way to make your privacy breach-proof.
Avoid Unsafe Internet Services
You must avoid unsafe internet services at all costs. These services include public WiFi networks, free-to-use connections, and unknown internet services. Such types of internet services are the hotspots for cybercriminals. They infect these networks with spyware, ransomware, and all types of malware that allow them to access your devices quickly. As soon as you connect them you open the gate for black hats to infect your device and access all the data. You must avoid using public networks and free-to-use internet services to do your online activities. If you ever need to connect to public internet services make sure to use VPN on your device.
Limit What You Share
You must limit sharing information online as much as possible. Do not optimize social media accounts unnecessarily. Black hats follow you at every step to learn more and more about you. They follow your social media accounts and collect information about your whereabouts, interests, and preferences all the time. They can use this information to access your social media accounts or make fake profiles to promote their illicit acts in your name. So, do not share everything on social media accounts. It can put you in unwanted danger.
Use Strong Passwords
You should use strong, unique, and long passwords to secure your social media apps, device access, and banking transfers. Make sure to use different passcodes to secure different accounts and access points. Do not share your user IDs, passwords, or OTPs with anyone. For added security, you must use multifactor authentication services. It will add more protection layers to your sensitive and important accounts. If anyone steals your user ID and password by chance, he will still be unable to access your account until he has OTP and additional verification data with him. This way you will be able to secure your data and maintain privacy.
Use Private Browsing
You should use private or incognito browsing mode to do your online activities. When you do this, your search history is not recorded in the browser. As a result, it will be difficult for hackers to track your online activities and exploit them for anything harmful. You can employ the same tactic to safeguard your communications. You should use private messaging apps like Telegram and WhatsApp to protect your messages. These message apps protect your conversations and encrypt your data end-to-end.
Avoid Fun Quizzes
Cybercriminals use fun quizzes to extract more and more information from their targets. For example, they run fun quizzes on social media and other online platforms that ask different types of questions from you. The questions are related to your favorite book, or animal, your school or college, and the bank you are using. In the excitement of answering the questions, you unknowingly reveal all the information and become a victim of scams and fraud. Hence, beware of these types of online frauds. They are nothing but tactics used in social engineering attacks to steal your personal data.
Delete Unwanted Apps
Make sure you do not have any unwanted apps and programs on your devices. These useless programs overburden the device system causing it to slow down. Over time these apps become outdated and make the system vulnerable to malicious threats. Due to this, deadly malware infiltrates your device and disrupts normal operations. They modify system settings and steal your confidential data. Hence, you must keep your PC clean of potentially unwanted apps and programs to protect online privacy.
Disable Autofill Function
No doubt the autofill function is convenient and fast. But it is not a safe option because cybercriminals are creating fake login windows to steal your important User ID and Passwords. They just launch the page on your screen and the system rushes to fulfill the information in it. As soon as you click Ok on the login button black hats get all the information on the other side. Make sure to disable the autofill function to secure your credentials from theft.
Clear Browser Cookies
Cookies are small data pieces that your browser stores when you do a specific online activity such as visiting a website, downloading a file, accessing an account, or doing online shopping. They contain key information such as login credentials, credit card details, preferences, online websites you visit, etc. Cyberpunks can steal this information when you connect to the internet and your browser transfers this data to the destination server to answer your queries. If they get handed to your browser cookies, they can hijack your sessions and access your key accounts. Therefore, you should always delete your browser cookies to keep your online privacy secure.
