Tuesday, December 1, 2015
Edward Snowden’s reputation has long vanished. For some time now, he has been living in exile somewhere in Moscow, due to the State Department canceling his passport as he was in route to Latin America.
Snowden states that Opsec is indeed very important, even for those who do are not concerned about the NSA. If you were to stop and think about who the real victims of surveillance are, upon a day-to-day basis, you are also thinking about people in which reside in an abusive spousal relationship. You are also thinking about individuals who are concerned about stalkers. You are thinking about children who are worried about their parents overhearing their conversations.
In order to regain your privacy in your digital life, you may want to consider taking some notes from here.
The first step that you can take upon privacy take back, is to encrypt your cell phone(s) phone calls as well as your text messages. The best way to encrypt your cell phone is by utilizing the smartphone application “Signal” that is designed and developed by Open Whisper Systems. This application is free and you are able to download it immediately. Everyone you are talking to already must also utilize this same level of security, this protect the message(s) and calls unable to read and hear if the conversation happens to be intercepted.
Once you and your sources have established a mobile security encryption for communication, you would also want to encrypt your hard disk. This will aid in the protection and security as well as lowers the plausibility of stolen information. Such information that you should encrypt is Pictures, Contact information, work information, family and education files.
Now you should also utilize a password manager. This is one of the main things in which private information exposed. However, this is not the most powerful adversaries, but it happens to be one of the more common methods utilized. All of your information may actually be revealed due to one service or another in which you stopped using several years ago actually gets hacked. Then you password that you were using at that time just so happens to work for another service or account such as Gmail. A great password manager creates and provides you with a very unique password for each and every site, and these passwords are unbreakable. You also don’t have to worry about the heavy burden of attempting to memorize these passwords either.
**A highly recommend Password Manager is KeePassX. This software is free, open-source, and even cross-platform. Even better, this software doesn’t store anything in the cloud!**
Two-factor authentication is becoming more of a security measure in today’s standards. So apply the two-factor authentication as often as you possibly can. The value of performing a two-factor authentication is that this form allows you to know right away if anyone has gained access to your account. The provider of the two-factor authentication sends you a text message alerting you if anyone is attempting to access your account, thus giving you the power to allow the access or change your password to prevent the other user denied permission. Your attacker would need to have access to both forms, your first form would be your password and the second form is your physical phone. Having access to both of these devices tremendously increases your security measures.
You should never live your life as if you are electronically naked. Just like your physical cloths, you need to arm yourself with “Electronic Armor”. Your armor should not be complicated and so confusing that you give up. This should be easy-to-use and user friendly, this is why we have provided you with the software and resources to better guard yourself. Applications such as Signal is low friction, and you don’t have to re-order your life just to utilize encryption.
You can also utilize safe and secure web browsers such as Tor. Tor is the most important privacy-enhancing technology project in which is being used by hundreds already. I personally utilize Tor all the time. However, Tor is not “Bulletproof” and does have a very few flaws, but none the less, Tor is an excellent source to use for online surfing security.
**Tor Browser is an excellent way to selectively to look up something online and not leaving a trace that you were even there!**
However, there are a few High-Risk individuals in which their environment needs are completely different on a case-by-case situation. In order to be completely anonymous online is not something in which one can simply learn from reading just one article. To be completely anonymous online would take a few weeks to months of extensive research, and even then, you are not promised 100% security and anonymity.
