Practical tips to keep yourself from getting hacked.
Unless you’re dignitary like Edward Snowden, you probably don’t fear getting hacked on the cyberspace every day.But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be taking practical precautions to keep your picture safe.
From messaging to email, we’ve posed some useful tips to project yourself online with the help of Will Strafach, a security analyst and former iPhone hacker active on a comprehensive mobile security solution for iOS called Sudo Security.
If a link or email looks suspicious, don’t open it.
Turn two-step verification on for every online account you have that supports it, especially your email provider.
Your email provider is a specifically important login that should have two-step enabled; if hackers achieve access to your email, then they may be able to access other accounts that your email is registered with — just ask Jennifer Lawrence.
Use different passwords for your logins. 1Password is a great app to manage them
Keep a passcode enabled on your phone. Seriously.
If you don’t have a passcode on your phone, you’re preparing your data well accessible to anyone who comes beyond your phone if it’s lost or stolen.
A four-digit PIN has 10,000 possible sequences, which is fairly protected, but a six-digit code has 1 million attainable combinations. Apple’s Touch ID sensor or a identify sensor on a modern Android phone is also a great way to secure your device.
FaceTime and Signal will both let you make encrypted audio calls.
If you’re worried about the feds listening in on your calls, both Signal and FaceTime encrypt audio calls over an internet connection.
A VPN doesn’t necessarily mean that all your web traffic is in safe hands, so exercise caution.
A common protection practice for when you’re akin to a public WiFi network is to use a VPN or virtual private network. This encrypts all of your traffic, making it beyond the possibility for a hacker to see what data you’re relay over the WiFi network.
But VPNs also introduce a potential problem: the provider gift the service. “You have to trust the VPN worker with no way to know if they’re not keeping logs,” explained Strafach. “They can say in the buying that they do not care logs, but you don’t know if they’re actually keeping them or not.”
Apple’s iMessage is encrypted, but if you’re still nervous or want something that works on iOS and Android, use the Signal app.
Apple’s iMessage is end-to-end encrypted, which means it’s safe to 99% of communication. The company has announce repeatedly in court that if the law were to subpoena a customer’s iMessages, Apple wouldn’t be able to give in because it’s encrypted data.
“Encryption is a byproduct because Apple could do it to make it safe,” Will Strafach told TI. “I don’t think it’s meant to be a privately insured thing as a primary goal.” Strafach also approved Signal as a good encrypted chat app. It’s open-source, which means it’s not reserved by any company and it’s encryption methods are vacant for anyone to examine.
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