None of my tech friends have an Amazon echo product in their house. Many of them are hesitant to buy a Tesla – but not because of the cost. My tech friends are concerned about privacy.
Why?
The common sentiment seems to be a respect for what technology can do. If you ever hear your amazon echo respond when you didn’t want it to, you might think nothing of it and keep going about your day – but a tech person seems to have a much more paranoid reaction. I would argue that they have every reason to be worried. There are countless ways to spy on someone via their webcam, is it that much of a stretch to think someone could listen to you all day via your alexa? Your phone might be doing that too.
Here’s the takeaway: Any lock made by man can be broken by man. Check your locks frequently.
Question your own computer. You might have a firewall or antivirus software that can prevent you from being compromised, but what do you have in place to see if you already were compromised? Too many people that do not take the time to understand technology blindly trust technology.
You don’t have to read Fortify Your Data Privacy to figure out how to protect your data. There are a plethora of great free resources online (like the FYD youtube page) that can walk you through the steps many people in the know consider when using the internet.
Check your phone settings to see which apps have access to what functionalities. Check your credit card history. Check your amazon payments. See which apps are connected to your Google account or your Facebook account. Does FireFox store all of your passwords or do you know them?
If you are living off of free services, make no mistake about it – there is always a cost.
No one else cares about your privacy as much as you do, and if you don’t take the time to have good data hygiene, you will only have yourself to blame. This little blog article isn’t being written to make you afraid of technology, but I do want to make you more aware of it.