Simple Privacy Tweaks: Fast and Effective Methods To Secure Your Personal Information

The digital-first era has undoubtedly broadened the horizons of possibilities but has eventually increased the threat vector and created new vulnerabilities. 

Whether we talk about phishing attacks or modern brute-force attacks where individuals' identities are compromised, ignoring the importance of private security could be the worst thing ever.  

Hence, individuals must take proactive steps to ensure their privacy remains secure when interacting with any web platform or mobile application. 

Let’s explore some of the most crucial privacy tweaks that can be implemented quickly and effectively to safeguard your personal information so you can gain peace of mind and control your personal information. 

Why Your Privacy Matters Now More Than Ever Before? 

We all share our personal information almost on every platform or mobile app to sign-up or sign in. And we know it’s crucial, but we must maintain the limits of the information we share. 

However, besides the conventional security and privacy mechanisms, cybercriminals are finding new ways to breach the privacy of individuals and are always on the hunt for exploiting sensitive information. 

Most users ignore details while they operate online or share their personal information, be it phishing or OTP fraud. And this may lead to a privacy breach. 

Moreover, what’s even more worrisome is that hackers can now bypass weak authentication layers. This means you may fall prey to an attack even if you have multi-factor authentication and ignore any suspicious email or text message that demands you to open a link. 

Hence, you, as a user, need to pay close attention to several aspects that can ensure your sensitive information remains secure. 

Let’s explore some fruitful privacy tweaks that you can practice to ensure your personal information remains secure. 

Strengthen Your Passwords 

Although most of us know the importance of using strong passwords, we ignore implementing the same. And this results in a privacy breach when a cybercriminal succeeds in bypassing the authentication due to a weak password. 

Using complex passwords should be your biggest priority, and ensuring you don’t repeat passwords for multiple accounts should be your second priority. 

However, most users complain of being unable to remember passwords. And here’s where they need to leverage the true potential of password managers. 

Password managers streamline your password issues and help quickly fill in your credentials on various platforms at a single tap. This means you need not remember complex passwords for every forum. The password manager does it all. 

Apart from this, using password managers ensures all your credentials are securely saved and can be accessed without any hassle. 

Enable Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)

Enabling multi-factor authentication for your account security could be the best way to reinforce your login authentication. 

With MFA, you must authenticate through two or more authentication means while accessing your account and sensitive information. 

In MFA, you receive a unique OTP (one-time password) on your smartphone or a unique code on your email. This OTP or code must be provided during authentication after you enter your account credentials. And thus incorporating a double line of defense. 

With MFA, you can always ensure that even if one authentication mechanism, i.e., user id & password, is compromised, an attacker couldn’t access your account or exploit your details since they have to bypass another stringent authentication layer. 

For MFA, you can use various MFA tools, including Google authenticator, that provides you a notification on your smartphone whenever you wish to access your account. If you decline the authentication request, no one can access your account. 

Regular Software Update 

No one knows the importance of updating their operating systems, applications, and plugins until they fall prey to a cyber attack. 

Cybercriminals are constantly exploring new ways to sneak into your systems if your applications and protection firewalls aren’t working correctly or updated for a long time. 

Hence, you need to update your software, applications, and even web browsers since the latest updates contain security patches that address new vulnerabilities and protect your privacy online. 

Also, it would be a great decision to turn on automatic updates for your applications on all your devices so that you don’t miss any critical security updates. 

Be Mindful of Public Wi-Fi

Never trust the public Wi-Fi network, no matter how lucrative the free internet service may look. 

We often use the public internet to conduct transactions or send sensitive information over email. However, this is risky since most public networks are on the radar of cybercriminals, and they may continuously monitor your activities via a shared network. 

Hence, avoiding using private networks in restaurants, bars, or airport lounges is always a great idea, and I prefer connecting to a trusted network. 

However, suppose you need to complete an urgent task. In that case, you can use a virtual private network (VPN) service to ensure the highest level of information security. 

And it’s highly recommended that you avoid online banking or accessing personal accounts when connected to public Wi-Fi networks. 

Review App Permissions

Last but not least, you have to review app permissions granted to all your mobile applications to ensure that your personal information is used only in a way that doesn’t lead to a privacy breach. 

And when we talk about reviewing app permissions, you must examine the access and licenses granted to mobile applications installed on your devices, especially your smartphone. 

When you install an application, it often requests several permissions to access certain features and functionality or information on your device. By carefully reviewing these permissions, you can ensure that your privacy is protected and no application could ever misuse/exploit your personal information. 

Sometimes a minor negligence while providing permission to an application may lead to privacy-related issues, which can sometimes be fatal. 

Conclusion 

While technology is growing by leaps and bounds, the threat landscape is also increasing significantly. And to ensure you remain ahead of the league, you must prioritize your privacy, always. 

The tweaks above could be very helpful in preventing a privacy breach and ensuring that your personal information remains secure.