VERY IMPORTANT
Internet banking
Social media profiles
(work) email
school and work information systems
SECURE CONNECTION
How to protect your privacy?
What’s the lesson about?
Your privacy and data are valuable. Don't believe it? Many digital products and services are free because you give them access to part of your privacy, and certainly, there are other organizations that want to know information about you. Let's cut the theory short; just realize that data is the new gold of our age. It makes sense to treat it as such, especially when it concerns ourselves.
This module contains 3 parts:
EXTRA 15 MIN
3 CHALLENGES
1 TUTORIAL
1. How to control your digital footprint?
Your activities on the internet create a digital footprint. It contains data of various nature and importance—from emails, comments, publicly shared photos to other shared files. The more active you are, the more significant your digital footprint is. There is always a risk that someone could misuse it. How? From targeting unwanted ads, through cyber fraud, bullying and manipulation, to identity theft.
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#1
Find out where you stand
Start by searching yourself on search engines like Google or Seznam. How? Simply enter your name, nicknames, email address, phone number, or something else that is characteristic of you into the search engine. Tip: if your name is common, add something more specific: residence, school, occupation.
Your name, nicknames, email address, phone number, or anything else that is characteristic of you.
Evaluate what you found about yourself and how the information is interconnected. For example, if one page lists your name and email and another your email and phone number, everything can be easily linked in a way you might not like.
Explore other systems or platforms you use or have used. For example, school systems, classified portals, discussion forums, and of course, social media—we will focus more on these later. If you have a Google account, also check Google Dashboard. You will find out what data Google has on you and you can also delete it.
Remove or request removal wherever you deem appropriate.
Challenge: Stay informed with Google Alerts
Google Alerts service works very simply—you enter the keywords you want to monitor—typically your name or another identifier. If it then appears somewhere on the internet, the service will send you an email.
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#2
Focus on social media
Social media allows us to share almost everything, and many people eagerly use this opportunity. Whatever your approach, we recommend adhering to these principles:
- Set your profiles to private – where possible. However, such settings cannot prevent someone you've already granted access to from leaking information about you.
- Clean up your friends lists – do you really want to have them all?
- Be cautious about what you share – especially the posting of photos, videos, and various opinions is better thought out. One trick is to think about whether you would mind if the same information were in all the media tomorrow and seen by your grandmother.
- When sharing involves others – especially if it involves children or something that could harm another person. Conversely, if there are unpleasant posts by others that concern you, discreetly ask for their removal. But beware, being too zealous might not pay off—look up the Streisand Effect.
- Obviously exploitable information – such as sharing information about regular routes, habits, photographing, and publishing documents, tickets, or other personal documents on social networks is just as risky as sending a thief a text message: "From June 15 to 25, you can!"
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#3
Tips a tricks
What is and isn't the anonymous mode of a browser for?
The anonymous mode of a browser is useful but often misunderstood. Let's explain it then. What it's good for:
What it's good for:
- Automatically deletes browsing history and filled-out form data once you close the window. This keeps your activity on the device hidden. Therefore, anonymous mode is a necessity when using a device that isn't ours.
- After closing this mode, cookies from the browsed websites are deleted.
What to watch out for:
- Your IP address will still be public, meaning your online activities can still be tracked by internet service providers.
- Websites will still collect data about your browsing using tracking scripts, even if you use anonymous mode.
- Your computer can still be infected with a harmful file. Anonymous mode does not provide any additional protection.
Challenge: Decide what is important to you
Knowing the importance of your accounts and information that a potential attacker could access will be useful not only in protecting your privacy. This is the goal of this challenge.
How to do it?
1. Imagine you have three lockers:
- The red locker represents a well-secured vault for accounts and information with a high risk of misuse.
- Yellow for accounts and information that still need protection, albeit slightly less.
- Green is for accounts and information that are freely accessible.
2. Think about where you would place the accounts you have and the information you work with. Ask yourself if it would be okay if they fell into the wrong hands. By identifying important accounts and information, you will know when to be especially cautious. We see it roughly like this:
SOMETHING BETWEEN
Phone number
Adress of permanent residenceNOT IMPORTANT
E-mail with promotional offers
How to proceed with file sharing?
Need to send a large file? Cloud services and online storage can be very useful. But it's important not to forget the risks to your privacy and security—we have two tips for you.
- When working with files, do not send confidential or sensitive documents through public storage. Sharing via various online storages is suitable for public documents, such as general presentations and non-personal data.
- Do not share files with everyone in cloud services. Set who should have access to the files and who can edit them.
2. Encryption in online communication
End-to-end encryption ensures that your messages, images, and files can only be read by you and the recipients of your messages. No one else, not even the service operators, has access to the content.
It is important to know that not all communication apps offer this encryption. There are also apps that only claim to use it.
It may be useful to know whether your app offers end-to-end encryption. The National Cyber and Information Security Agency (NÚKIB) has prepared an analysis that describes everything briefly and clearly. You can see the result in the form of a graphic table below.
Challenge: Get familiar with the NÚKIB analysis
We recommend you go through the mentioned analysis in its entirety; it's really short and you will know how your communication app actually stands. This will allow you to change it or start working with it differently.
Guide: Specifically for Messenger
Do you use Messenger and most of your friends do too? Fine, we just want to tell you that it also offers advanced security features that allow you to communicate without worries.
Part of these features is the option to enable “Disappearing messages”, which automatically delete messages after 24 hours. If someone takes a screenshot or screen recording, a notification will appear in the chat. Learn to use it with the help of the tutorial below.
How to use "disappearing messages" in Messenger
- Open the Messenger app and select the conversation in which you want to enable disappearing messages.
- Click on the person's name at the top of the screen to open conversation details.
- Scroll down, select “Disappearing messages”, and then choose the “24 hours” option.
3. What is a VPN and how can it help me?
Imagine a VPN as a secret tunnel that protects your online activities from prying eyes. The main benefit of this tool today lies in hiding your IP address, which allows you to bypass geographic restrictions and censorship in some countries. Thus, even today, a VPN can provide a higher level of privacy and security.
You may have heard that you should only connect to public Wi-Fi through a VPN. Today, this is not strictly necessary, thanks to the widespread use of the HTTPS protocol, which secures your data.
Nevertheless, using a VPN can still make sense, especially when traveling abroad. Not all foreign websites use HTTPS, and a VPN with the option to change IP addresses allows you to bypass local censorship or access content limited to certain countries, such as Czech sports broadcasts unavailable outside the Czech Republic.
Let's summarize it then:
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VPN allows you to safely connect to corporate or school systems, even when you are far from the office or home.
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Secures your connection in case the site does not have an HTTPS protocol, thus minimizing the risk of data leakage.
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VPN hides your real IP address and replaces it with the IP address of the VPN server. In other words, you can view websites and services that are normally blocked in other countries or are not available abroad.
How and where can I get a VPN?
You can obtain a VPN from a number of providers, but it is key to choose carefully. An important criterion is the trustworthiness of the provider, which can be assessed based on reviews and the quality of the encryption offered. Remember that the VPN provider has access to your internet traffic data (but not to the specific content you exchange with sites secured by the HTTPS protocol).
Although VPN services are usually paid and available directly on the providers' websites, there are also free VPNs that may be of dubious quality and less secure. Therefore, it is recommended to invest in a verified paid service.
Activate VPN from Masaryk University
Masaryk University provides VPN to employees and students for free. You can find the installation guide on the MU IT service pages.
Moreover, because your device will be connected to the university network, you will also remotely access the electronic information resources of MUNI (ezdroje.muni.cz), university licenses, dedicated servers (available to a specific faculty and workplace).
- Keep in mind that even with simple steps and a few principles, you can easily limit your digital footprint.
- Not all communication platforms offer the same encryption. Consider what you will use to communicate on the internet.
- Anonymous mode does not guarantee anonymity on the internet. No one can do that. You can only gain partial anonymity with a VPN.
Bonuses for curious users
Try Brave and TOR browsers
Brave is a web browser that places special emphasis on the privacy and security of users. Its main priority is to minimize the tracking of online activity and ensure that your personal data remains protected. For instance, Brave automatically blocks ads and tracking scripts on websites, prevents the collection of your data by third parties, and has an enhanced anonymous mode. If privacy is a priority for you, definitely try this browser.
As an alternative to the Brave browser, we recommend Tor. It is an open-source package based on Onion Routing technology. Tor encrypts data multiple times and routes it through a global network of voluntarily operated servers, known as relays, which gradually remove layers of encryption and ensure user anonymity. Tor provides a higher level of privacy than regular VPN services due to its layered encryption and separation of the user's identity from their online activities. Despite potential slowdowns and access limitations, Tor offers excellent anonymity and privacy protection.
Connecting to public Wi-Fi networks - threat or scare?
You may have heard that you should never connect to public Wi-Fi without a VPN. The reality, however, is far less dramatic. If you're visiting websites with HTTPS (the standard nowadays), your communication is encrypted – meaning an attacker on the same network cannot see your passwords or the content of the pages you visit. That said, this is no reason to let your guard down: you still need to stay alert to spot phishing links and suspicious addresses in your browser. In our article, we debunk the three most common myths about connecting to public Wi-Fi – and as a bonus, we set up our own Wi-Fi network and tested what an attacker can actually see. Read the full article here.