This form of encryption prevents anyone except those communicating from accessing or reading the content of messages, including vendors themselves.įollowing Snowden's disclosure of the NSA's mass surveillance activities, end-to-end encryption has been widely adopted by many online communication services - much to the chagrin of government and law enforcement agencies. Unfortunately, this has also led to the adoption of SSL by fraudsters.Īpple, Google, and Mozilla have forced TLS certificate lifespans to reduce, with roughly a year becoming an acceptable lifespan for certificates.Įnd-to-end encryption is also becoming more popular.
Let's Encrypt offers free SSL/TLS certificates to webmasters who wish to improve their websites' security. One way this is achieved is by using SSL and TLS certificates that support encryption on website domains. Here's what it means, how it'll impact individuals and businesses.īusinesses that handle data belonging to their customers are being scrutinized more and more with the arrival of regulatory changes such as the EU's General Data Protection Regulation, designed to create a level playing field and stipulate adequate security measures to protect consumer privacy and data.Ĭompanies will often encrypt your information as part of the process, which is a way to encode information to make it unreadable by unauthorized parties. General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, is coming. Why does it matter? If your phone number ends up outside of your control, this means that 2FA codes can be stolen and any online account linked to this number is at risk of being hijacked.Įverything you need to know about the new general data protection regulations They do this in order to transfer a number away from a handset - even if only for a short period of time - and then 'own' the number for the time it takes to grab two-factor authentication (2FA) sent to the phone number and to access a target account, whether this is banking, email, or a cryptocurrency wallet. In targeted attacks, fraudsters are using social engineering techniques to impersonate their victims in calls to telephone service providers. Why does it matter? If an email account acts as a singular hub for other services, a single compromise can snowball into the hijack of many accounts and services. As central hubs to other online services, hackers may try to obtain our passwords through credential stuffing, social engineering, or phishing scams in order to jump to other services. Our email accounts are often the pathway that can provide a link to all our other valuable accounts, as well as a record of our communication with friends, families, and colleagues.
There can now be millions - or even billions - of dollars at risk when information security isn't handled properly.
Today's security threats have expanded in scope and seriousness. Taking the steps outlined below can not only give you some sanctuary from spreading surveillance tactics but also help keep you safe from cyberattackers, scam artists, and a new, emerging issue: technological stalking. We must all do whatever we can to safeguard our personal privacy not only from agencies and companies but also from each other.
Having "nothing to hide" doesn't cut it anymore. China's Great Firewall, the UK's Snooper's Charter, the US' mass surveillance and bulk data collection - compliments of the National Security Agency (NSA) and Edward Snowden's whistleblowing - Russia's insidious election meddling, and countless censorship and communication blackout schemes across the Middle East are all contributing to a global surveillance state in which privacy is a luxury of the few and not a right of the many.Īs surveillance becomes a common factor of our daily lives, privacy is in danger of no longer being considered an intrinsic right - and it seems we, too, are adopting our own personal forms of online digital stalking and spying.Įverything from our web browsing to mobile devices and the Internet of Things (IoT) products installed in our homes has the potential to erode our privacy and personal security, and you cannot depend on vendors or ever-changing surveillance rules to keep them intact.