Archives - Privacy Settings


Personalize your YouTube ads

If your family shares a computer and you want to be able to control the types of ads your children or other family members see, you can personalize your ads in your YouTube settings. Otherwise, YouTube will try to show you targeted ads based on the data they collect about you and your family. To […]

Cancel microphone access for apps you aren’t using

Have you ever questioned if someone was secretly eavesdropping on your conversations? Many mobile apps, including hundreds of popular games, do exactly that, by scanning for ambient audio cues to better target their advertisements. For your own privacy, think about restricting microphone access for such applications unless you’re actively using it in them.

Try Paranoid for your smart speakers

If you don’t want your smart speaker hearing your conversations, but you don’t want the hassle of consistently muting and unmuting it or using a voice remote, you can try Paranoid. Paranoid is a device that sits on the mute button of the smart speaker and only turns it off when it hears the wake […]

Check privacy policies and uncheck boxes

Check the privacy policy before you submit your email address to a website. See if it allows the company to sell your email to others. You might decide not to submit your email address to websites that won’t protect it. When submitting your email address to a website, look for pre-checked boxes that sign you […]

What is “Do Not Track”?

Do Not Track is a setting in most internet browsers that allows you to express your preference not to be tracked across the web. Turning on Do Not Track through your web browser sends a signal to every website you visit that you don’t want to be tracked from site to site. Companies then know […]

Make your Instagram account private

Your Instagram likely contains personal photos and information about your location. Making your account private will hide everything but your profile picture and a brief description from anyone whom you do not accept as a follower. It even hides the posts that you “like.” To make your account private: Select Settings > Privacy > Account […]