Privacy: Protecting Your Personal Information Online

by Manish Mradul  (manish.mradul@gmail.com)

With the growth of technology, the ways of marketing have observed a paradigm shift.

In the past, the marketing agencies and corporate sector used banner display newspapers, magazines, or television and radio broadcasts for the publicity of new products to a larger audience.

In today's world of artificial intelligence, the marketing agencies are using "The Internet" to meet their publicity goals.  Through social media, individuals generate vast amounts of personal data online.

This data is collected and sold as big data to the corporate sector to be used in data warehouses.  Data warehouses are used to analyze big data to generate visualized results that may be used for decision making such as analyzing trends, predicting the potential of a new product, understanding the targeted audience, and generating new sales and marketing plans.

Advanced big data systems can access and analyze this information easily, creating a big privacy concern.  Although many corporate firms use this data to generate personalized results to meet user demand, there still exists the vulnerability that this confidential data might be misused.

In this article, we will discuss how you can protect your confidential data, improve your privacy, and surf safely on the Internet.

What Are Big Data Systems?

Big data systems are systems that store and analyze a huge volume of data to generate personalized results.

It uses multiple techniques such as data warehousing, data mining, machine learning, visualization, etc.  The data can be gathered from various online activities performed by users as they surf through the Internet every day.

Sources from which the data is collected are heterogeneous in nature.  This data is passed through an Extract, Transform, and Load (ETL) phase before it is used for analysis.

This process takes place in a data warehouse.  Big data systems use machine learning algorithms to divide different categories of audience or product types into clusters or predefined classes.

Once the model is trained, data of a new person is then compared with the existing clusters or classes and the person is then added to a particular group of people defining the targeted audience for different companies.  Hundreds of clusters are generated from big data to create a baseline for user activity in order to predict what the user is interested in, what the current need of the user might be, what the user might need in the future.

Based on this baseline, important decisions are made such as changes in existing products, launching new products, generating advertisement based on current trends, etc.

Another famous technique used by big data systems is web mining.  This technique enables the systems to take data from the search history of a person or what the person scrolls through on the World Wide Web.

Based on this data, personalized website content is generated such as the Facebook feed.  Many important events in the past have been successful due to the decisions made by analyzing big data.

Why Is This a Problem?

While big data is a useful tool for organizations and decision makers, it comes with users' privacy being compromised.

Social media or web users share all kinds of data online that can sometimes be highly confidential.

While it is a threat for users, it is also a negative point for the corporations as users lose trust in the websites that are not secure, leading to a loss in traffic.  This may lead to low sales through e-commerce websites.  With all the information available to the corporate sector via big data systems, the minds of people can be manipulated to alter their interests, political views, and lifestyle in a way which benefits the organization.

Additionally, these analyses can reveal sensitive data of the users, which may cause damage if it is misused, such as transaction records, location, travel history, etc.

What Can a User Do to Protect Personal Information Online?

Data confidentiality, integrity and availability are three essentials of data security.

Here are a set of steps that you can perform to make sure your data is secure:

Come up with a good and unique password:  Passwords are used to shield and differentiate an individual's data from the general Internet public.  Make sure that you use strong and unique passwords.  Strong passwords are the ones that meet complexity requirements.  Such passwords are difficult to guess or even memorize if someone takes a quick glance while it is being entered.

Sometimes even after using a strong password, your password gets leaked or your account gets hacked by a person using other means of entering your account such malicious software or phishing links.  To protect yourself from that, it is important for you to ensure that these passwords are changed frequently.

Enable two-factor authentication for your accounts:  Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) is a dual-layer security technique that requires you to provide two forms of passwords to log into your accounts.  This includes a password and a code sent to your phone or email.  2FA can help prevent unauthorized users from getting access to your accounts even if they have gotten your password by some means.  The second code is unique every time and is sent to a phone number or email address that you provide.  Most popular social media platforms such as Instagram and Facebook offer two-factor authentication to ensure data security and safety from hackers.

Be mindful what you share on the Internet:  One should realize that the data shared on the Internet is at risk of being leaked by attackers.  Therefore, it is important to avoid posting any kind of sensitive data that may cause harm if it is leaked.  Confidential data may include your financial details, your identification details, travel history, etc.

Enable desired privacy settings:  Privacy settings include a variety of controls that, for example, define who sees your data online, who shares your data on their accounts or social circle, who sends you messages and requests, who sees your activity status, how many devices log in to your account, as well as blocking and unblocking accounts, etc.

Apart from social applications, most browsers also allow you to enable your desired privacy settings for yourself or for your children using parental controls.  These can be defined from within the browser's settings.  Good privacy settings enable you to decide where your data goes.

Enable Virtual Private Network (VPN) extension:  Virtual Private Networks or VPNs are commonly used networks that are provided by proxy servers or VPN applications to allow users to surf through the Internet with a masked IP address.  Think of VPN as a tunnel.  A vehicle passing through the tunnel cannot be observed by the people outside that tunnel.

Just like that, a VPN provides you a unique link to surf the Internet with additional privacy by masking your IP address and location, as well as additional features like malware protection and ad-blocking.  Many VPN apps and browser extensions are available on the Internet with free and paid versions.

Do not click on suspicious links:  A common trick used by attackers is to share infected links that are used to download malware into your computer.  This malware is used to obtain unauthorized access to your computer to get your personal data - which might be highly confidential.

Scammers create phishing links to rob people by tricking them into sharing their bank details.  To protect yourself from this, it is important that you only open links that come from authentic sources.

Do not download software from unauthorized websites:  When you download cracked versions of paid software using illegal means, you often have to face the consequences of viruses being downloaded into your computer.  Many people use torrent files to download software and media (movies or songs) from other peers.

An attacker can easily connect to these networks and share malware.  It is important that you download software from authentic sources and publishers.

Check digital certificate before accessing any website:  Websites that provide a secure experience are always certified by a trusted third-party.  These third-parties provide a uniquely generated digital certificate that ensures that the website is authentic, secure, and verified.

To check a digital certificate, click on the lock symbol on the address bar.  Click on "Connection is secure."  After this, click on "Certificate is valid."

Make sure that your confidential data is encrypted by the platform:  Encrypted data refers to the data or message that is converted from plain text into cypher text which is only readable to the person having the correct key for it.  Encryption ensures that the message is only read by the authorized party, keeping in consideration the high confidentiality of the message.

Many social applications such as WhatsApp, Telegram, Viber, and Facebook Messenger.

Use anti-virus software:  Anti-virus software is a tool used to cope with the problem of viruses.  Make sure to use anti-virus software to scan any attachments or downloads before opening them.  This can help detect and prevent malware from infecting your device.  Anti-virus software protects against viruses and malware, scans email attachments, helps prevent identity theft, and provides real-time protection.

Conclusion

With the increase in technology and the use of the Internet, marketing methods have faced a paradigm shift.  Big data systems are being used to make important decisions in the political and corporate sector.

This change has its pros and cons.  These days, people share a lot of personal data online that may include their personal opinions, interests, and identification details.

It generates a concern for users' data privacy.  By following the steps suggested in this article, one can ensure safe search and usage of the Internet.