[Workshop] Digital Security
Date: November 22nd, 2020
Resource Person: Dhyta Caturani (Indonesia).
She is a feminist activist working on issues related to human rights, social justice, civil liberties, sexuality, women’s rights, and violence against women.
It is significant to address emerging issues in the vast moving technology-based development era, one of which is digital security. The narrative “youth are digital natives” doesn’t address the diversity of youth sub-population and it does ignore the fact that youth are still unaware of how they can be targeted for cyber security issues. It is also important to capacitate youth with digital security knowledge and skills through workshops / training.
KNOWLEDGE & DISCUSSION
Internet is being a main place for us to connect each other. Everyone of us get many advantages from internet. But, we have to be aware that there are risks and threats behind all the conveniences of internet.
Most of us use Google as a main browser and email service, and Google can observe your habit and also take your private data of your online activities through those two services.
It is also done by any technology companies such as Facebook that has acquired WhatsApp and Instagram. The company can observe your habit in social media, grab your data and sell it to the third party for any purposes like marketing purposes or political purposes. That is the way technological companies get money from the free service of social media. By selling the data of the user, the company gets much more money than they use to build the app.
One thing that you should realize is that what you do on the internet is never a private thing.
Even though you can set a privacy setting in your post, but you can not hide it from the owner of the apps. All of your online activity is recorded on the server and can be analyzed as meta data that shows your preference, your habit, your political tendencies, or your opinion about any public issues.
Why our data is sellable?
Our data and our metadata are able to be analyzed to know about our behaviour or our character. It can be used for measuring the social trend in a country or for determining what trend to create. By having our metadata they can influence our decision by presenting a specific thing in our social media account, we easily become their object of digital marketing or digital surveillance.
For example, once you browse about shoes in a browser or in e-commerce. Suddenly the advertisements about shoes will appear in your social media page. It is because all the apps are connected and telling each other about what is your preference for today.
It happened also for a political purpose, some politician doing a campaign by paying the technological company to display his photo or his good image in your social media. He tries to make many people believe that he is a good politician and deserves to be a leader.
Digital security should be practiced, learn little by little. Even Though 100% safe is a myth, at least you do as much as you can to protect your digital life by updating routinely about digital security tools in your device.
Basic Tips To Digital Security
- Make sure a website you will open is beginning by “https”, it is a safe tunnel for data traffic.
- Always clear your browsing history, cookies, and cache in browser.
- Try to use a non mainstream browser, for example is tor browser
- Do not easily believe with any pop up messages offering about the service by downloading an apps. It can be malware or spyware.
- Install anti virus, malware and spyware apps. Make sure it is from reliable source and famous name such as Avast, Smadav, CC cleaner.
- Keep your operating system updated.
- Strong and secure your passwords; use long, complex, and unique characters.
- Different account should have a different password, it is a better way.
- Use 2 layer of security, but do not use SMS gateway. Use reliable 2 factor authentication apps such as FreeOTP or Authy.
- Always beware of any links or attachments. Do not click if you are not sure it is safe.
- Set your account’s privacy level according to your needs in using each account.
- Think before you share something, do not give too much information about yourself through social media.
- Do not share your personal information such as your current location, your family, your home, your id card, your boarding pass, etc.
- Respect other privacy.
- Communicate securely. Use platform with end-to end encryption features.
- Never leave your device unattended. Do not lose your sight on your device.
- Do not overwhelm yourself by taking too much information that can stress you out.
