Data Security Tips for Data Center Organizers
Lock down your social media accounts.
Set active accounts to private.
Clean up friend lists.
Delete old accounts.
Sign up for a data removal service, if you can afford it.
They cost about $100/year.
At Fight for the Future, we use DeleteMe.
There are many good options in this space.
Deleting your personal info from Google is most important and free.
If you have a lot of time on your hands, check out the BADBOOL list.
Don’t re-use passwords.
Data breaches happen all the time. When your password is stolen from one website, all accounts using that password can be hacked.
Check out haveibeenpwned.com to see how many (known) data breaches you’ve been a part of.
Use a password manager and multi-factor authentication (2FA) and/or passkeys.
At Fight for the Future, we use 1Password.
Bitwarden is also good, and it has a free tier.
If you’re all in on Apple, Apple Passwords will do the job.
Install software updates.
This is the number one way to not get hacked.
Treat email as semi-public.
Our policy: don’t email anything you wouldn’t want to see on the front page of a newspaper.
Use Signal for private conversations.
Signal is the current gold standard for cross-platform private communication.
It’s end-to-end encrypted, which means even Signal can’t see your messages.
You can even use it for meetings!
Encrypt your devices.
Disk encryption prevents your device from being accessed if it’s stolen or seized.
iPhones, Macs, and Android phones are encrypted by default these days.
On Windows, you need to jump through some hoops.
iCloud has a feature called Advanced Device Encryption that will also encrypt backups so Apple can’t access them.
Resources
Interested in getting yourself or your org off Big Tech? Sign up for Fight for the Future’s next de-googling webinar.