Preserving Privacy in the Digital Jungle — The Forgotten Principle
Is the world a more dangerous place than it used to be in the past?
It is the question that is rumbling in the mind of many people nowadays, and there is a very prominent reason to ask such a question.
At first, we might think that the world we see nowadays is rather safe as you can walk through the streets of the major towns at night without the need to look over your shoulder each time you hear someone walking behind. Of course, it is not the case in every country and every city, but I would like to focus here on the major cities which are considered safe.
Although people might claim that the level of security in society has been rising steadily for the past decades or even centuries, there has been something that kept on growing unnoticed. The truth is that we might not see people killing each other on the streets with sidearms or bare hands if we are walking through the main streets as the shortcuts and some shady areas were, are, and will be present. Instead, we might witness various techniques used to gain something from people who have never seen the attacker in person.
Privacy vs Anonymity
What would be the most common answer to the question of what is the difference between Privacy and Anonymity on a street survey? Do you think most of us would be able to explain the difference?
How many of us can see the difference between those two terms in the present era of the widespread Internet? Some may claim that it is not so important because we are only average citizens, and our security profile is not set as high. Yet, we feel strange if our neighbor is eavesdropping on us or is too nosy.
Is it a matter of having trouble with privacy or anonymity?
When someone just broke into the store while we were doing our regular shopping, and by accident, the man unraveled his face to the camera for a second?
Is it a matter of privacy or anonymity?
According to the Cambridge Dictionary, privacy is the right someone has to keep their personal life or personal information secret or known only to a small group of people. In other words, our personal life and doings are what should be hidden from the public, not our credentials.
On the other hand, we have anonymity, which is described as a situation in which a person is not known by or spoken of by name. In this case, we are concerned about not revealing our true identity so that our doings that might take place in plain sight cannot be linked to us.
Now the question arises of whether we should be concerned about our anonymity or our privacy. It depends on the actions we are about to do and on our security profile. However, when we are not doing any despicable actions, we should be more concerned about our privacy rather than anonymity.
That is why we, as citizens of various countries, should care about our privacy and the information we are so willingly disclosing in the era of social media. In the era of people having their profiles on social media even before they are born. When we take a closer look at what kind of information one can extract from various media uploaded to the internet, it is perplexing as to how careless we are about what we are disclosing to the general public.
Take a step back and think about your own social media profiles. What kind of information people can get from going through your media? Take into consideration the metadata that some of us can extract and find valuable information based on it.
Swatting
Have you ever heard of swatting? In case you have not heard about such a phenomenon, here is the definition. According to the Cambridge Dictionary, swatting is the act of making a false report of a serious emergency so that a SWAT team (= a group of officers trained to deal with dangerous situations) will go to a person’s home, by someone who wants to frighten, upset, or cause problems for that person.
Violation of privacy and security with the use of swatting is a technique used by an attacker to induce in the victim the feeling of being under constant surveillance and fear of being accused of a crime committed by someone else.
There are many notable events of swatting taking place; however, I would like to focus on the one from 2020 aimed at Mark Herring, a 60-year-old man from Tennesee, US.
In the early days of Twitter, people could choose usernames that nowadays are scarce or unavailable. The example might be two-letters usernames or unique usernames like @tennesse, used by Mark Herring. The well-known rule that runs many businesses is the idea of scarcity; if something is scarce, it has to be valuable.
Twitter usernames seen as original or unique has already been registered by people who were the early users of Twitter. There cannot be two identical usernames on Twitter. The only way to change a username to a unique one requires the first person to give away his current username. People are not often willing to give up their username. Mainly, when they have already built their community or used a given username for so long, it became a part of their personality.
That is why harassing and violating the privacy of those people became frequent. Spamming messages, nagging phones, strange pizza deliveries, and swatting are some of the techniques used to induce fear in the people and persuade them to give away their Twitter username.
Unfortunately, not every swatting attempt ends just as a privacy violation and a couple of minutes filled with fear. Mark Herring died during that swatting event. He died of a heart attack.
As you see, even without disclosing much information, we can easily be aimed because of various reasons. Is it possible that by taking proper care of our privacy, we will be able to keep our families safe and sound? Unfortunately, you cannot be 100% sure that you will be safe. However, by taking even the most basic precautions, you might evade most dangers.
Data Leaks
Most people with internet access use social media like Facebook, Instagram or Twitter. The ability to communicate with almost anyone and make friends worldwide has never been so easy. It seems so natural.
However, for some of us, it might feel too natural. It is as if we are talking with our best friends in some café when no one is paying any attention whatsoever to the subject of our discussion. Is it the same on the Internet?
Imagine talking to your friend in that café, where every word you speak is written on a sheet of paper and left in that café forever. This is what exchanging information on the Internet looks like, and this is what I would say most of us are not sufficiently aware of.
What is someone gets to see and read through our discussion? What can they find there? Information about personal life? Details about work? Some passwords and other credentials that we gave someone to use our Netflix account for a moment? What about photographs and videos we have sent or posted on social media?
Once on the Internet, it stays there forever.
Data Leaks are more common than most people might think. It is so common that you can prepare a report of the most common Data Leaks and present it on YouTube every week, just as TechLore is doing. I highly recommend you visit this channel if you want to know more and stay up to date with Data Leaks and similar cases.
However, what are Data Leaks and what kind of sensitive information might get leaked? I am not going to walk you through the technicalities of Data Leaks as I prefer to stay on the surface. It will be far easier to spread awareness while not distracting you with technical details.
We are living in the era of digital information and digital storage. Every transaction you make with your credit card, phone or other digital means of payment leaves a trace of what, when and where have been purchased. A similar case is whenever you are booking a flight, a room in a hotel or even when you have bought something online, and you are filling the form with the information as to where and to who the package will be delivered.
All of this information is stored by the companies, and, as with everything, some vulnerability might be found. The moment a vulnerability is found, the attacker gets access, and the data might be leaked. Data leaks do not always include the whole range of complete data. More often, those are some pieces of data like telephone numbers, credit card numbers, e-mail addresses, names, etc. Not to mention all the data that people are giving away for free on their social media profiles in their bio, their photos, tagging geolocation, and others.
What it means is that every piece of the data might get leaked at some point, and you never know what the attacker will do with the obtained data. That is why is it better to think of any data you are giving away digitally as something that might be used against you.
Ask yourself a question.
What can be done with the information I have just disclosed? How can I be harmed because of it?
It might sound as if those are not some sensitive or crucial data. Well, it might be if you are not aware of what one might do while having access to it. As I have said before, I will not go into the technical details, so it will be better to clarify one thing. With access to any data listed above, the professional can do almost anything. It all comes down to creativity and engagement. In most cases, the leaked data is sold on the black market instead of using it to target an individual. The aim is set on the entire group of people as it is more time and resource-efficient.
Impersonators
Let us now think about the above mentioned Data Leaks. What if someone gets all of that information about the particular person and attempt to impersonate his victim? Will it be easy to perform?
Think about how easily your relatives and friends can be tricked into believing that you are the person they are chatting with. Taking into consideration the fact that the impersonator would use some telephone number (technically not the same, but it would look like the same one), they would have the same or even your own profile on social media due to some passwords and e-mails that they would obtain from some Data Leak. How much harm could they do with it?
It is the question that you have to answer for yourself. However, taking into consideration that nowadays almost everything is digital and can be done digitally, I would say that it is only the creativity that can limit someone’s doings against you, or as you.
Not everyone can get to the information from Data Leaks, so it might not be as bad as it looks. That is true to some extent and depends highly on you and your digital habits. Even if you are one of many people whose data gets leaked, you will not be harmed if the information you have disclosed does not lead to your true identity.
If you are not giving away your address, telephone number and credit card details, you will not be harmed in almost any way. It might be too difficult and time-consuming to chase you. If you can get similar results while choosing the easier way, most people will make the easiest choice. What I mean is not that you should lie while filling out the form; instead, you should use various tools like e-mail aliases, pre-paid phones etc.
The question is, how many of us are taking such thorough care of our data on an everyday basis? I might try to guess the answer, and I think I will not be far from the truth.
That is why let us talk about the digital habits that you can and should work on if you would like to improve your overall digital security. Let us go back to social media usage and assume that we are not a part of some data leak.
The social media game is quite often about creating your status, which makes it a zero-sum game. That is why people feel the inner need to boast about the things they have or pretend to have, and give away so many details from their private lives for free. The most important information like location, friends and relatives, most common places the person is going to, e-mail address or other means of keeping in touch with that person, external appearance and personality traits derived from it and much more.
All of that information is waiting for a person with malicious intent to impersonate or take advantage of someone. The reason might be as mundane as financial profit, or it might be focused on doing significant damage to the victim’s social image and life.
Go through your social media and see how much information people can take advantage of if they only want to. I hope you will not be perplexed by the results, and you keep the most significant information to yourself.
Child information abuse
The following paragraph will be short and concise as the main subject should be highly thought-provoking to the reader and not descriptive or too extensive.
How many people do you know take pictures of their children or even newborns and post them on social media? How many of them are doing it due to sheer egotistical reasons? I guess we are all aware of how happy and merry are the people who just became parents of a healthy newborn.
However, there is a limit to that happiness. Your child is not a toy, nor is it a thing you should boast about on the internet. Keep it private as it is as vulnerable as you are in the digital field. If you post its photos and other details without considering the implications of it, you are as silly as your child is at the beginning of its life.
The severe consequences that a young child might have to deal with later in life may become the additional burden that we, as parents, are giving our child. Instead of granting him a financial and mental foundation, onto which he will be able to build up his independent life, we are putting ourselves and our child in danger of becoming a victim to the digital threats that we know of today and the ones that will emerge in the future.
That is why I would like to ask each and every one of you to take caution in giving away the information about your child. Think twice before you disclose any information about your child online. The moment you are not certain or have second thoughts, do not hesitate to ask someone to help you with making the decision.
Conclusions
We are living in the digital world, where everything is changing exponentially. It is impossible to be aware of all the changes happening in every area of our lives, which makes us vulnerable due to our lack of knowledge.
That is why it is more significant than it has ever been to take additional precautions while walking through the digital jungle of the present world. We do not have to be tech-savvy to the point of being an expert in the field of security.
All you have to do is to apply basic precautions, learn basic habits that will minimize the risks, and remember that the Internet is not a toy you can meddle with without any consequences.
The Internet is a tool that can be used for great accomplishments and life-changing projects. However, it can also bring dreadful consequences to the people who forget that we live in the digital jungle.
“Arguing that you do not care about privacy because you have nothing to hide, is like arguing that you do not care about free speech because you have nothing to say.”
Edward Snowden
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