An amazing amount of information can be learned about a person from sites like Truthfinder.com. For example, you may learn that you are on a government watch list. If you want to learn more, you must pay. Other sites that reveal personal information are:
- Instant Checkmate
- CocoFinder
- InteliusTruePeopleSearch
Call tracking software provides supplemental data and tools that aren’t available through performance analytics solutions such as Google Analytics.
Different generations view privacy differently. Younger consumers are much more concerned about privacy protection and Baby Boomers are less concerned.
What can you do to protect yourself?
Enable multi-factor authentication for all your logins around the web. There are plenty of authenticator apps you can use with your mobile devices, or you could carry around a hardware security key on your keychain. Entering passcodes is an extra step in the login process, but it could be the safeguard that keeps malicious individuals out of your accounts in the event of a data breach.
Use a password manager to keep track of your credentials. Getting a randomly-generated password from an app is a much safer option than trying to remember the same three passwords and using them for every website. Most modern passwords also allow you to store photo attachments and sensitive documents in your encrypted vault.
Read app and website privacy policies. This step takes the longest, but it’s the key to understanding how companies use your data. Keep an eye out for anything unusual, like a calculator app that collects your health metrics.
Fill out web forms with only the information you want to be known. Be careful about putting in an accurate your birthday, full name, phone number, and physical address. If you can’t figure out why an app or website needs the information they’re harvesting from you, it’s not a good idea to give them the real data.
Just say no to unnecessary data collection. In many cases, all of the information requested on a company’s web form is not required information, so you can get away with leaving out important data about yourself. You can also choose not to accept cookies on many websites, and deny certain data requests made by applications without harming your user experience in any way.
Leaving your mobile phones at home would help evade the persistent location tracking deployed by wireless carriers. To keep what you pay for prescription drugs and health services would you would have to pay in cash. For travel, using public transportation like a bus or a train would make your travel less detectable than ride-hailing apps like Uber.
In a post-Roe world, the problems of digital privacy are more dire. Technology has made it practically impossible for Americans to evade ubiquitous tracking. There are many tools and ways of surveying people.
Even so, they could still be tracked. Law enforcement agencies can obtain court orders for access to detailed information, including location data logged by phone networks. And many police departments have their own surveillance technologies, like license plate readers.
The Cyber Safety Review Board is responsible for reviewing significant cybersecurity events as well as developing insights into how government institutions and private enterprises can protect themselves from threat actors.
Most businesses use technology as part of their day-to-day operations, which opens them up to cybersecurity risks. Most of our efforts to protect data rely on keeping attackers out and away from the information, rather than obscuring the information itself. Cryptography, encryption, and public key infrastructure are poised to play a greater role in security and identity management as attacks increase in sophistication and severity.
The Federal Trade Commission is moving forward with a process to review and update data privacy protections as Congress is weighing proposals aimed at creating a comprehensive federal data privacy law.
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