Archives - Privacy


Don’t upload high-resolution photos to social media

If you want to be especially discreet about your location, you might not want to upload high-resolution photos to your social media accounts. Photos with high resolution can include information like street signs, addresses or names of businesses. Using these pieces of information, a person could quite easily decipher your exact location.

Change your Alexa wake word

If you have an Echo, or another Alexa device, it could be listening to your conversations if your wake word is something you use often. Amazon claims that only relevant conversations are stored, but if you want to limit the amount of conversations that fall in this category, you may need to be more cautious. […]

Do a Facebook sweep for personal information

Cybercriminals often scour social media profiles for private information that can be used to guess passwords or otherwise compromise your identity. Periodically check your Facebook privacy settings and look for posts that could provide unwanted information.

Make your Twitter account temporarily private

If you have short-term privacy concerns or you suspect that you might be an identity theft target, you can temporarily lock your Twitter profile. From the “Settings and privacy” menu, click “Privacy and safety.” Then select “Protect your Tweets.”

Use DuckDuckGo for private route planning

Privacy-minded users may already be aware of services and browsers like DuckDuckGo. Now, this search engine offers private route planning. To use this feature, enter a location in the search bar. Click on the resulting map and select “Directions.” Route options will be displayed based on your anonymized current location.

Value and protect personal information

Your devices make it easy to connect to the world around you, but they can also pack a lot of info about you and your friends and family, such as your contacts, photos, videos, location and health and financial data. Information about you, such as the games you like to play, what you search for […]