3 Easy Ways to Secure Your Data in Half an Hour | #datingscams | #lovescams | #facebookscams


If you think that because you alone use your own devices, you are maintaining your privacy, you’re mistaken. Your personal data is at the mercy of various organizations, and unfortunately, many make a profit by selling it. In the worst-case scenarios, this data is leaked by malicious actors to scam or steal from you. To avoid this, you can take three easy precautions.

How Do Companies Use Your Data?

One of the most attractive aspects of the internet is that browsing is free. People love to have access to free apps and services, free trials, and more. Users often don’t realize the ease with which we give away personal data: above all, names, surnames, email addresses, addresses, employers, and much more.

Practically no one reads the privacy policy and terms of service of sites, and the direct consequence is that you authorize organizations to do whatever they want with your data, including selling it to other organizations.

Without realizing it, businesses can put together your complete profile and even understand your preferences, tastes, and more.

Why Data Brokers Are to Blame

Data brokers access your personal data, create a detailed profile of individuals, and then sell it again to other companies. There are several types of data brokers, but few people understand that they are far more influential than users think: they are part of a large lucrative industry, and most importantly, comparatively few know about them.

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This benefits them because they are rarely scrutinized, even though there have been numerous complaints and reports with evidence of their dealings. Even the Federal Trade Commission called on the US Congress to pass laws to denounce data brokers.

Some organizations mask this situation (access and collection of personal data) as a way to provide a better experience for people in general. That way everything you do on Facebook, Google, Amazon, Instagram, TokTok, etc, is recorded and later used to give you a more “personalized experience.”

That is why you sometimes receive recommendations that fit what you were previously looking for on Google, or concerning a profile on Instagram, you clicked on days ago. And there is no doubt that digital services provide do sometimes help us get the best possible experience in exchange for exposing our personal data, but still, this makes many forget that there are risks from these activities.


How to Quickly Avoid Sharing Our Personal Data

There are dozens of ways to help you protect your data: some are easy to apply, while others are time-consuming. Here are the top ways to protect your data that you can do in under half an hour.

1. Pay For a Data Removal Service

As you might know, there is already an endless amount of your data on the internet, and fortunately, there are ways to delete this data. This of course can be an endless process of browsing data brokers and aggregator sites to request to be taken off lists. That being said, you can pay for a data removal service too.

Websites such as DeleteMe will remove your data from the main aggregator sites and data brokers with a couple of clicks. Since data brokers will likely continue to collect your data from websites you use, you might be interested in an annual subscription. This will allow DeleteMe to screen and delete your data continuously.


And remember, data brokers are often hacked, meaning your personal information can be used for financial scams and identity theft. So paying for a data removal service can also keep you safe from cybercriminals.

2. Browse the Internet Anonymously

While browsing, companies detect your activities and take advantage by raising prices. The more you consult a commerce website—for example, looking for flights—the more expensive what you’re searching for—in this case, plane tickets—might become. Businesses call this “custom pricing” and even “smart pricing.”

The best way to avoid this is by browsing the net incognito (say, by using a VPN, which masks your data) or using a search engine that will not gather data, such as DuckDuckGo.

3. Encrypt All Your Information

Encryption will stop many companies from getting hold of your data for marketing purposes and protect you against cybercriminals attempting to steal from you. Encrypting data is easy and fast once you download specific apps.

To start with, you must encrypt your on-device data by using Full-Disk Encryption (FDE). For Windows, we recommend you use BitLocker, while Mac users could try out FileVault. While BitLocker will also allow you to encrypt USBs and all sorts of external drives, FileVault will not, so Mac users can access the Disk Utility to encrypt USBs.

If you use the cloud, you should also use encryption. Boxcryptor is excellent software for most popular cloud storage services, used to encrypt your files before being uploaded to the cloud, not while they’re in the cloud, which makes all the difference.

Tresorit is also a great alternative offering End-to-End Encryption (E2EE) for cloud storage service. Tresprit’s encryption key is so secure that your files won’t even be accessible to cloud service providers.

Finally, you can use Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) software to encrypt your email. PGP uses public-private key encryption that will enable you to exchange encrypted emails, texts, files, directories, and whole disk partitions. Mailvelope is one of the most popular and trusted PGP software compatible with most email providers, like Gmail and Yahoo.

Alternatively, for the best privacy experience, you can make an account with an encrypted email provider. These can include Tutanota, Hushmail, and ProtonMail; even some traditional email providers have the ability to encrypt emails. An added benefit is that most of these encrypted email providers won’t be able to read your emails and use an algorithm to direct ads at you based on your conversations.

Take the Time to Secure Your Data

Every day, we write and receive emails and text messages; we read news and watch videos, and use dozens of online services and applications. It’s getting tougher to keep track of and preserve the enormous amounts of data we generate. And if you believe that you have nothing to hide, you are mistaken.

Unprotected data can be used against you to develop a digital profile a cybercriminal can use to carry out phishing attacks or fraud. It can also be used to intrude on your privacy by displaying ads that are tailored to your preferences based on very intimate information. Never underestimate your online worth.

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