You might be surprised just how much data your online accounts are farming from you – and sharing or selling. Between your purchases, social media activity, GPS location tracking, in-store cameras, and your basic account details? They can practically clone you.
Why is this a problem? Large companies sell this information, share it with partners, or fail to protect it – and your data is breached (like 23andMe's recent targeted attack on Ashkenazi Jews). A password change doesn't begin to address the scope of the damage.
AI is making this problem worse. Microsoft researchers exposed 38TB of data... ChatGPT was hacked. Chatbots - quickly becoming a standard in customer contact - are falling victim to "prompt injection" attacks. Generative AI is also causing users to inadvertently leak sensitive data as they use AI tools:
“Because it’s such a powerful productivity tool, we’re seeing all kinds of activity that can be deemed very risky and dangerous, like CEOs uploading sensitive emails to their board of directors to get it rewritten,” Howard Ting, CEO of data protection firm Cyberhaven, told IT Brew.
Is all of this too little too late? No. Think of it like wildfire management. Put out small fires where you can to avoid big blazes.
Guidelines for Data Protection
- Limit your company likes and follows in social media.
- Close commerce accounts where you can - it's easy to set up an account thinking, "well, I'm here... I may as well," but it's just one more thing to manage. At the very least, login to those accounts and remove your payment data, change the email address to your DuckDuckGo address (below) – or close the account.
- Use DuckDuckGo's email protection when you sign up for non-commerce items
- Download the Permission Slip app by Consumer Reports. The Washington Post has a good article describing how it works – and yes, it took a bit of doing to get my account established (they may have been busy) but once in, you page through companies, see what they are farming, and if you have an account? Either request that they not sell your data, or close the account from within the app. You do not need any logins or passwords to make requests.
- Think before you (a) create new accounts, (b) download new games and apps, (c) comment on any social media post that isn't from a direct friend or family member.
Photo by Shahadat Rahman on Unsplash
