techno Beware the smart toaster
We’ve come a long way since the web was just a fun place to share cat gifs, write Alex Hern and Arwa Mahdawi. Now it’s a place mostly dedicated to finding and selling your personal info. Tips for surviving the surveillance age
ON the internet, the adage goes, nobody knows you’re a dog. That joke is only 15 years old, but seems as if it is from an entirely different era. Once upon a time the internet was associated with anonymity; today it is synonymous with surveillance. Not only do modern technology companies know full well you’re not a dog (not even an extremely precocious poodle), they know whether you own a dog and what sort of dog it is. And, based on your preferred category of canine, they can go a long way to inferring — and influencing — your political views.
Just over a fortnight ago, the story broke about how Facebook had failed to protect the personal information of tens of millions of its users. The revelations sparked a #DeleteFacebook movement and some people downloaded their Facebook data before removing themselves from the social network. During this process, many of these users were shocked to see just how much intel about them the internet behemoth had accumulated. If you use Facebook apps on Android, for example — and, even inadvertently, gave it permission — it seems the company has been collecting your call and text data for years.
It’s not me, it’s you! So Facebook protested, in the wake of widespread anger about its datacollection practices. You acquiesced to our opaque privacy policies. You agreed to let us mine and monetise the minutiae of your existence. Why are you so upset?
Facebook’s surprise at our outrage is not unreasonable. For years, technology companies have faced very little scrutiny as they mushroomed in size and power. Finally, however, the tide is turning. We seem to have reached a watershed moment when it comes to public attitudes towards the use of our private information. We are more aware of the implications of our online behaviour than ever before.
Awareness of our digital footprint is one thing, but what are we to do about it? In the wake of the Facebook revelations, it’s clear that we can’t all keep clicking as usual if we value our privacy or our democracy. It’s still relatively early in the internet era and we are all still figuring it out as we go. However, best practices when it comes to security and online etiquette are starting to emerge. Here’s a guide to some of the new rules of the internet.
Download all the information Google has on you
You may well have downloaded your Facebook data already; it has become something of a trend in recent days. Now take a look at what Google has on you. Go to Google’s ‘‘Takeout’’ tool and download your data from the multiple Google products you probably use, such as Gmail, Maps, Search and Drive. You’ll get sent a few enormous files that contain information about everything from the YouTube videos you have watched, your search history, your location history and so on. Once you’ve seen just how much information about you is in the cloud, you may want to go about deleting it. I highly recommend deleting your Google Maps history, for a start, unless you are particularly eager to have a detailed online record of everywhere you have ever been. You may also want to stop Google from tracking your location history. Sign in to Google, open Maps, then click on ‘‘timeline’’ in the menu. At the bottom, there’s an option to manage your location history.
Try not to let your smart toaster take down the internet
These days you can buy a ‘‘smart’’ version of just about anything. There are connected toasters, which let you personalise your toast settings and notify your phone when your breakfast is ready. There are Bluetoothenabled forks, which vibrate when you are eating too quickly. There are internetconnected umbrellas, which alert you if it looks like it’s going to rain.
Not only are most of these gadgets unnecessary and expensive, most of them have shoddy security and are a liability. In 2016, for example, hackers created a zombie army of internetconnected devices and used them to take down large parts of the internet, including Netflix, Facebook and Spotify. So think twice about whether you really need to buy that fancy connected gadget. There’s enough to worry about today without having to wonder if your toaster is plotting against you.
Ensure your AirDrop settings are dickpicproof
If you are an iPhone user, turn off your AirDrop function while in a public place or limit it to contacts. This stops strangers from sending you unsolicited dick pics via AirDrop, which is a thing that actually happens because of course it does.
Secure your old Yahoo account
You may have an old email account you never use any more and can’t be bothered to delete. That email account is a treasure trove of personal information just waiting to be hacked; indeed, if it’s a Yahoo account it was hacked in 2013. You don’t need necessarily to delete your old account but you should secure it. Change the password and turn on twostep verification. Make sure you’ve disconnected any linked services (such as cloud storage) in your settings.
Check if you have been pwned
‘‘Pwned’’ is internetspeak for, among other things, having your email account compromised in a data breach. It’s a good idea to check this regularly. Simply go to haveibeenpwned.com, enter your email address, and the website will let you know if and when your details have been compromised so you can take appropriate action such as changing your password.
Turn off notifications for anything that’s not another person speaking directly to you
Sometimes this will be easy: is it a singleplayer game? It doesn’t need notifications at all. You can find out if you’ve got more gems, or extra energy — or whatever other fake currency the game hopes you will care about — in your own time, not when it wants to drive your engagement. Other times, this will be harder. Instagram’s rubbish — ‘‘a famous dog just posted a picture that received 12 likes’’ — can be turned off, but you’ll have to dig down in the settings to find it.
Never put your kids on the public internet
Maybe it’s fine to upload pics to a shared (private) photo album, or mention their day in a group DM. But if it’s public, Google can find it. And if Google can find it, it’s never going away. How are you going to tell your child in 16 years’ time that they can’t get a drivers’ licence because Daddy put a highres photo of their iris online when they were two and now they trip alarms from here to Mars?
Sometimes it’s worth just wiping everything and starting over
Your phone, your tweets, your Facebook account: all of these things are temporary. They will pass. Free yourself from an obsession with digital hoarding. If you wipe your phone every year, you learn which apps you need and which are just sitting in the background hoovering up data. If you wipe your Facebook account every year, you learn which friends you actually like and which are just hanging on to your social life like a barnacle.
Have as many socialmediafree days in the week as you have alcoholfree days
This can be zero if you want, but know that we’re judging you.
Retrain your brain to focus
Save up your longreads using Instapaper or Pocket and read them without distraction. Don’t dip in and out of that 4000word article on turtles: read it in one go. Or maybe even try a book!
Don’t let the algorithms pick what you do
You are not a robot, you are a human being, and exercising your own free will is the greatest strength you have. When that YouTube video ends, don’t watch the next one that autoplays. When you pick up your phone in the morning, don’t just click on the stories at the top of Apple News or Google Now. Exercise choice! Exercise freedom! Exercise humanity!
1234 is not an acceptable password
Nor is ‘‘password’’. Nor is ‘‘monkey’’ — which, for some reason, is one of the most popular passwords there is. The most secure passwords are very long ones, so start thinking in terms of ‘‘passphrases’’ instead of password. For example, ‘‘nomonkeyisnotagoodpassword’’ would take a computer 128 undecillion years to crack.
Do what you want with your data, but guard your friends’ info with your life
Yes, you should think twice before granting that fun app you downloaded access to your location or your photo library. Do you trust it not to do weird things with your pictures? Do you know it won’t track your every movement? But ultimately, those are your decisions, and they are for you to make. But your friends’ data isn’t yours, it’s theirs, and you are a trusted custodian. Don’t think twice before authorising access to your address book, or your friends’ profiles: think five or six times, and then don’t do it.
Finally, remember your privacy is worth protecting
You might not have anything to hide (except your embarrassing Netflix history), but that doesn’t mean you should be blase about your privacy. Increasingly, our inner lives are being reduced to a series of data points; every little thing we do is for sale. As we’re starting to see, this nonstop surveillance changes us. It influences the things we buy and the ideas we buy into. Being more mindful of our online behaviour, then, isn’t just important when it comes to protecting our information, it’s essential to protecting our individuality. — Guardian News and Media