Privacy seems to be increasingly difficult to protect nowadays,
especially online privacy. But there are a couple of simple steps that
you can take to better protect your personal information online.
Jumia Travel shares 4 helpful ways to protect your online privacy.
Use the Right Browser Add-Ons
Downloading
and installing the right browser add-ons can significantly help to
improve your privacy situation. Add-ons like Disconnect, Ghostery and
HTTPS Everywhere can help to block many forms of invasive tracking that
can compromise your online privacy. The HTTPS Everywhere has the special
feature of automatically redirecting you to the SSL-encrypted version
of a website to prevent ‘eavesdropping’ and other web-based attacks that
can compromise your online privacy.
Favour Apps That Have Encrypted Messaging
Apps
like Whatsapp, Signal etc. deliver on their promise of encrypted
communications and are some of the safest platforms for messaging and
communication. They remain the best option for protecting your online
privacy, especially for something as sensitive as your messages and
communications with others.
Don’t Completely Fill Out Your Social Media Profile
Things
like these are your personal responsibility to protect. Avoid filling
out your social media profile with sensitive information like your full
birth date (along with your birth year), your email address and phone
number. The fact is that nobody needs to know these things at first
sight; you can share such information with people as you get to know
them better. Anyone who is skimming through your social media profile
shouldn’t have access to these things. There is no point in sharing
every single detail about your life on social media and compromising
your privacy in potentially irreparable ways.
Use a Password Manager
If
you don’t already know that using the same password for more than one
website leaves you susceptible to phishing attacks, then you should take
note of that now. Though it might not be possible to remember the
different passwords of the dozens of online accounts you probably have,
you can use a password manager to help with this. A password manager
will not only help you remember passwords but can also help you generate
strong and unique passwords and automatically fill them into log-in
fields with the click of a button. LastPass is an example of a good
password manager that you can get for free, you can also do some
research to find others that you can use.
