The world’s population is close to 7.9 billion out of which more than 5.40 billion people now use mobile phones whereas around 4.8 billion people use internet and active messenger/social media users exceed 4.5 billion. This includes many who live more on social media rather than on oxygen. Every digitally active person should know that they, along with their not so active buddies whom they keep tagging, have already been profiled with all their personal data by the tech giants. A database that is unheard of, unimaginable and unprecedented in the history of mankind has been created with the help of tech companies ruthlessly exploiting our ever increasing addiction to their free services. This database, when used with facial recognition technology and AI tools poses serious privacy and national security threats.
With such a penetration of technology, technological slavery has also creeped in. I may be wrong but I strongly believe that anything stored electronically on any of our devices is seriously exposed to be compromised. Most of the mobile device operating systems have default factory settings to copy all contents of your mobile phones including contacts, notes, calendar entries and photos on their ‘cloudy’ cloud and keep updating it on a real-time basis, sometimes even without your explicit knowledge, on the pretext of keeping a backup of your data. Their services are designed in such a way that it requires or even indirectly forces us to keep logged in to their services and connected to the internet all the time so they can keep copying your digital footprints on a real-time basis.
Computer operating systems seems to have learnt it lately from mobile operating systems and now boasts of a having gigantic cloud storage that appears to have default setting to back up all your computer data on their ‘free drive’. Their latest updates even encourages you to link your computer to your mobile device for your ‘convenience’. We must also be aware that each and every such device with their mike and camera also has the potential of being converted into a remote listening, watching and recording device through malwares. One such malware might be caught and closed down but hundred others silently creep into digital space.
A popular ‘free’ service provider has default setting to track and store the coordinates of every location that you have ever visited or logged in from. They also track and store your location by the IP address. They also store the link of every video watched by you on their platform, every single website that you have ever visited on all your known devices using their browser. A very popular smartphone also tracks your movements and separately identifies significant locations visited by you and throws this data to its cloud. I could not understand why do my smartphone needed to do that before I found this out and disabled it.
This is unprecedented invasion in privacy and confidentiality of our movements, personal and business data stored on our computers and devices. Every piece of our personal and business information is being stored at a location far away and beyond the borders out of our control creating the big data about every digitally active human. We are so much addicted to these free services that we blindly accept and grant permissions to them to control of our digital life. We must remember that “when something is free, we are not customers, we are the products.”
Avoid placing data or personal pictures on cloud
We should never store our personal or business data on any free cloud storage. No cost savings can justify the compromising the confidentiality of our data. We can chose to backup our data on an external storage media keeping our data in our personal control. We must check default settings of any new device that we buy and change privacy settings and not blindly give all permissions to copy contacts,notes,photos and back up all data. We should not keep ‘logged in’ all the time on any mobile service. Rather log in when we need to install / update any app on our device and then log out. Personal photos and videos are more secure on conventional cameras than your ever vulnerable mobile or tab.
Do not keep mobile device connected to internet all the time
A constant internet connection is needed to listen to your live conversation or live track your location hence not being connected to the internet all the time on our devices can cripple any malicious activity. You may want to have the habit of ‘switching on’ the internet only when you need it and then ‘switch if off’. You may choose not to have ‘connect automatically’ Wi-Fi option on your devices but rather connect to internet only when you need it.
Don’t be hostage to one service provider
There are multiple map services like Google maps, Petal maps, Apple maps, Karta GPS. There are dozens of web browsers like microsoft edge,chrome,firefox,petal browser and several free email services like gmail,qq mail, outlook,yahoomail,rediffmail,hotmail and multiple search engines like Google Search, Petal Search,duckduckgo,bing,yahoo etc. Don’t stick to only one service provider for all your needs but rather use different ones for different requirements so not one service provider has all you search, email, browsing or location data.
Stop unnecessary activity tracking by service providers
You should disable all location tracking, web-browsing history and delete the other historical activity data that your service providers have already stored. Carefully scrutinize and change all default settings of your smartphone and other devices which invade into your privacy. You really do not want to have a digital daddy who monitors you more than your own daddy. Privacy is a personal privilege that cannot be sold out for anything including these so called free services. Stay Alert, Stay Safe.
The writer is a Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA) from ISACA, USA. He is also Ex-Chairman of Muscat Chapter of The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) and Ex-Vice President of Oman Chapter of the Institute of Internal Auditors (IIA).
