You may have heard the adage that if you aren’t the customer, you’re the product, perhaps in the context of a free-to-use platform like Facebook. There’s some truth to this saying. Whether it’s a desktop or mobile app that serves you aggressive ads, or a site that harnesses your compute cycles for Bitcoin mining, it’s […]

You might have seen Facebook posts beginning with “For the record…” and containing official-sounding language about how the poster is denying Facebook the ability to “take action” against him or her based on various statutes. These posts do nothing. If you want to control your privacy on the site, the best step is to not […]

At some point when using a web browser, you’ve probably had the following experience: You look something up in a search engine and click a few links to product pages, review sites, etc. You then navigate to another website, like Facebook or someone’s blog, seemingly unrelated to that previous search. There, you notice specific advertisements […]

If you use two-factor authentication (2FA) to protect your logins, there’s still some risk if the 2FA code is sent via SMS. YubiKey (a hardware authentication device) offers a safer alternative to text messages, in the form of a USB stick that must be physically plugged into your Mac/PC during login. It’s already compatible with […]

Although it wasn’t designed as such, Facebook is a powerful caller ID service – it’s easy for anyone to paste a phone number into the search field and find the profile associated with it. The same can be done with email addresses. Change your privacy settings to prevent strangers from easily digging into your personal […]

Mobile apps often ask for many permissions, including access to your camera, contacts list and geolocation. Think twice before granting them, since some applications only want these abilities for data harvesting purposes. For example, it’s not usually necessary to give Facebook access to your location, or to let Instagram listen in on your microphone (unless […]