The wonderful boys at FutureCrunch (subscribe to their upbeat view of the future if you don’t already) have made the very relevant observation that we shouldn’t have to surrender our privacy to progress. Sure, I am very happy about all the functionality I get from free apps but we all know that if they are “free”, we are the product. And, as someone who actually has a modicum of knowledge of contract law, I just click the “yes, yes, I agree” button when downloading apps… dumb, but there you go. Instant gratification and all that.
To counteract the tendency in all of us to 1-click surrender our privacy, they give an absolutely fabulous set of recommendations of the things we should be doing to safeguard our privacy:
1. Protect yourself from advertisers
2. Stop advertisers from tracking you
3. Change your settings on Facebook
4. Download and install a VPN
5. Check to see whether your privacy has been compromised
6. Start using encrypted email
7. Protect your messaging
8. Install a password manager
9. Make sure you’re using 2 Factor Authentication (2FA)
Follow the link above to take up their recommendations of how to do each of these. No regrets.