Staying Safe Online

There are many stories in the news, in newspapers and on the internet about data breaches, cloud hackers and misuse of personal data by large firms. Once unscrupulous companies have hold of your data, you could become the target of aggressive advertising and marketing messages.

On a personal level, you should make sure the equipment, passwords, and networks you are using are secure. You can make small changes to minimise the amount of data you are sharing.

The companies you use for services, also need to take reasonable steps to make sure they are protecting your data. Protecting your data and the networks people in the greater community also happens nationally and internationally.

The new GDPR(General Data Protection Regulation) law clarifies the following rights with regards to the way companies can use your data:

The right to be informed
The right of access
The right to rectification
The right to erasure
The right to restrict processing
The right to data portability
The right to object
Rights in relation to automated decision making and profiling.

Also, you can do your bit to make sure that you do not circulate surveys or forward emails where all the email addresses can easily be seen by anyone receiving the email. You can easily verify urbans legends on sites such as Snopes or double check on a reputable news sites such as the BBC.

We have also published other blog posts on similar topics. Click here to see them.

What you can do

Use the incognito mode on browsers .
You can find guides on how to do this on browsers such as Firefox, Opera, Safari & Explorer. Please note software such as browsers are regularly updated and please ensure you are looking at the right guide for the version you are using.
Use a search engine that doesn’t track you eg DuckDuckGo
Purchase a VPN to protect you if you plan on accessing sensitive information such as online banking using public wifi or unknown networks. Opera Browser has a VPN installed by default.
You can also make your own VPN , but it is complicated and requires buying a Raspberry Pi and doing some coding.

You can use companies such as www.cyberghostvpn.com/, www.nordvpn.com/, www.expressvpn.com/ or for mobile protonvpn.com/ and www.betternet.co/.

However, please be aware that companies can be shut down and can bought by other companies, so it is worth keeping an eye on tech news to make sure it is not purchased by another company whose values you do not agree with, or who you may not trust to keep your data safe.

Some sources for tech news are BBC Tech, Guardian Information Security and Computer Weekly News .

You can also find information from computer magazines such as WebUser which has a Stay Safe Online section every month which gives you tips on how to stay safe online.