Therefore to ensure that you manage the devastating effects of a data loss, you first need to be aware of possible data backup mistakes that most enterprises make. It is worth your time and money to ensure that your business is free of data backup errors. While you can employ a simple backup tool to protect your systems and your business from data loss, it is not enough. You need to arm yourself with information, learn about data backup mistakes, and how to avoid them. Read on and find out how you can stay free of data backup mistakes.

Not understanding and clarifying your business objectives

To run a successful business and to employ the right backup solution as well as a solid data recovery plan, you need to understand your business objective. If you do not understand your objectives, you will not have an idea on what data to protect, in the event of a crisis, what data you can afford to lose, and how long it will take for you to recover crucial information.

Therefore, to avoid this mistake, it is imperative that you lay down your objectives and have your priorities right. Evaluate possible data backup and recovery solutions, and settle for an option that matches the needs of your business. This will help you to;

• Protect important data such as accounting information, inventory and client records etc.
• Understand the impact of data loss in the event where all the crucial information is not recovered within the desired period of time.
• Know how to get your business back on track after a data loss incident or a system failure.
• By defining your goals, you will work towards a backup and data recovery plan that is robust and reliable.

Selective Approach

When it comes to data backup, most enterprises focus on the backup alone and not the recovery process. Backing up your data is important, but what is even more essential is your ability to run your business smoothly in the event of data loss or system failure.

Therefore, whether you decide to have a competent IT team or a professional backup plan, it is imperative that you employ a comprehensive approach. Ensure the solution you go for matches your business goals. You can consider advanced backup solutions that allow you to get back on track within minutes or a few hours as opposed to days. Remember, time is of the essence in any business and you cannot afford to lose your hard earned money due to a backup mistake.

Avoiding offsite data backup

It is always important to protect your data onsite as it offers a fast and efficient way to access files when the need arises. However, this is a huge mistake because, in the event where your whole system is affected by floods, fire and other incidences, you may not be able to recover your vital information. This is why it is always recommended that you avoid keeping your data backup in one location.

To avoid data loss, you need to protect your data offsite and onsite. Modern business data backup and recovery solutions are highly advanced. They deliver secure, automatic and comprehensive backup solutions. This plays a significant role in protecting your entire system and backup. It allows you to backup, restore data and get back to work with no major losses.

Using the Wrong Tools

In a business setup, there are different data setups. Each poses unique backup challenges. This means that you cannot use one solution/tool for all your backup needs. For example, virtual backup tools are designed with inbuilt cloning capabilities, but they often take up a lot of storage space. This is ideal for your virtual systems or if you constantly update your backup environment to avoid loss of data.

To avoid this mistake, you need to use the right backup tools that match the unique needs of your business. Identify applications that are most crucial for your business, explore the best or custom data protection solution that will be in line your business goals.

Lack of Planning

All enterprises experience growth. This means data growth. If your business is growing at a rapid rate, failing to plan for a solid data backup plan will lead to enormous losses. You are bound to hit your backup infrastructure limits, if you fail to plan ahead. While this is embarrassing, you also stand to suffer a severe impact of losing your most valued organizational data.

To avoid such, you need to plan ahead. As they say, prevention is better than cure. Plan for a robust backup and reporting solution that will integrate all your business needs. This helps you to enjoy timely, valuable and reliable solutions as well as insights. It helps you to forecast when it’s the right time to invest in a new and advanced backup plan.

Not Managing your Backup

Having a backup plan is not enough to protect your data from possible damages. It is wise to note that backups fail when least expected, applications and data systems change. If you do not focus on actively managing your data backup up with skilled resources, you may be taken by surprise with a huge downtime.

Therefore, it is imperative that you manage your backup actively, check on your advanced systems, monitor your backup status, and explore the best IT resources to keep your system running. You will be able to notice any possible failure, missing or corrupted backups and get a timely solution. You can outsource a backup plan and get a custom disaster data recovery solution that is managed by an expert or a professional service provider to stay safe.

The post How to Avoid Data Backup Mistakes That Most Enterprises Make appeared first on Online Privacy Tips.

These social media sites rely on the data given by their users. They build their business model according to the data we share on the sites. Social media analyzes the market using the information we provide them.

What type of data? The information that represents “our digital self.” We all have our personal profiles which have our necessary details like name, email address, contact number, location. What’s more to it?

Social media isn’t just about basic info anymore. It might not come as a surprise to you that comments, likes, dislikes, trips you planned, your chat with friends & interests, all is considered as a valuable data for not just social media business model but also marketers. Digital marketers communicate with their audience using the same data.

What about Privacy?

We all value our privacy more than anything. Let’s talk about Facebook’s privacy policy. 2018, was no doubt a tough year for the CEO Mark Zuckerberg. There were many data leakage scandals, serious inquiries, confused investors, & angry users! Facebook made many changes overall to prevent spams, & improve their privacy controls. To develop their ecosystem, they limited social media management tools to post or schedule on your personal profiles. Third party tools will be able to schedule posts on business pages & group only. These changes might be able to help small businesses & marketers with their social media strategies.

It’s not just marketing, social media has overall changed the way we used to communicate. These days most of our private communications happen online. Every click you made, the data you shared, the chat you deleted online has a record. Nothing is safe, nothing is a permanently deleted online.

Precautionary Steps Every User Should Take While Using Social Media

The gadgets, the advancements in technology & social media networks have changed the communication paradigm. As crucial social networks are to remain updated & connected with the world, there can be a few tips & hacks to secure our privacy. Here are the basics of all:

• No matter how anonymous your account is, always try to create a strong password.
• Don’t use the same password for different sites & accounts.
• Keep yourself aware of the latest privacy controls & update your setting regularly.
• Never click or visit any link that looks suspicious.
• Don’t enter your data (credit card or other) on unsecured connections & sites. Always look for a domain that starts with HTTPS whether it’s online shopping or forms.
• Never take the security questions for granted.
• Make sure the people you’re connecting or adding in your friend list are known to you.
• Always keep an updated anti-virus system installed on your computer & phone.
• Don’t forget to leave your accounts logged in.
• When not necessary keep the location of your phone turned off. Location might seem like an innocent piece of data, but coupled with other data, it could take stalking to a whole next level.

The world is becoming more internet-savvy these days, and social media networks are getting more vulnerable. Even with all the data collection & privacy controls, people find it hard to disconnect. Unplugging from social media is not an option anymore. These technologies have somehow made our lives convenient & efficient. As a user, you are accountable to take significant precautions to benefit from these social networking sites without the cost of your privacy.  As Gary Kovacs says,

“Privacy is not an option, and it shouldn’t be the price we accept for just getting on the Internet.”

The post Is Social Media A Serious Hazard To Privacy? appeared first on Online Privacy Tips.

For those of you, who don’t know what an emulator is, then allow us to explain. It is a software that allows one computer system (the host) to behave like another computer system (the guest).

With the Blue Stacks application, you can experience Android system on your PC or Mac. It synchronizes data of your Android device to your computer.

BlueStacks is a great tool to enjoy Android apps and games such as Instagram, Asphalt 8, Metal Gear and others alike on a larger screen.

In this Bluestacks review 2019, i will explain why this Android emulator is safe and legal to use or not.

What is BlueStacks?

Before explaining “Is BlueStacks Safe and Legal,” first every user should know what is BlueStacks?

In simple words, BlueStacks is a software that is built to enable Android apps on different Operating Systems such as Windows and MacOS.

This amazing Android emulator was founded in 2011 to provide users with a platform to play their favorite Android games on their Windows and Mac devices.

Moreover, enjoy as much as long as you want to play without any issue of battery timings.

Today almost 210 million people use this software on their PC and Macs with the help of using BlueStacks patented Layercake technology.

It is developed with high quality graphics, which enable you to play heavy games and applications. Is Bluestacks safe and legal? Let’s find out.

System Requirements

The requirements for downloading BlueStacks are that your PC should have 2 GB or higher memory (RAM) along with 4 GB space in hard drive and Direct X 9.0 or higher installed.

The requirements for downloading Blue Stacks on Mac are that your OS should be Mac OS Sierra or higher, 4GB RAM and hard disk space should be 4GB at least.

Does BlueStacks Have Viruses?

BlueStacks virus is just a myth. It is a phenomenal Android emulator. In fact, bluestacks security is tested against different anti-virus softwares, and is found 100% clean.

Is Bluestacks a secure app?

According to tests, the Blue stack App Player does not contain any malware, spyware, trojans or viruses.

Below are the test results of bluestacks tested against different popular anti-virus softwares.

Besides checking for viruses, Blue stacks has also been tested on anti-malware and anti-spam softwares

As seen from the results, Bluestacks is clean from viruses or any kind of malware, hence it is a very secure software to use.

Is BlueStacks Safe to Use on PC?

One concern that most users might have would be, is BlueStacks safe for PC? There is no need to worry about viruses and malware.

Since BlueStacks comes from a very well reputed background with investments made by Intel, Samsung, Qualcomm, and AMD.

Therefore, you can be relaxed from security point of view and not worry that Blue stacks is safe or not. BlueStacks automatically sends anonymous data statistics to their servers to improve user experience.

No personal information is gathered and if you still do not feel secure, you can simply turn off the data statistics feature from the settings menu.

Blue Stacks is also the first emulator to provide such high rate of security and privacy.

Is BlueStacks Safe for Mac?

There are millions of Apple fans who want to try out Android apps or games and Blue stack offers a way out. However, users may worry that is Bluestacks safe?

Bluestacks download can be done from its official website is highly recommended to avoid any third party involvement that may mean a security threat to your computer.

Other than that, Blue Stacks has gained reputable reviews from Mac users as well.

After testing against multiple anti-virus and anti-spam softwares and reviews the question is Bluestacks safe in 2019. We can confidentially say that this software will not harm your device in any way.

Is BlueStacks Legal and Secure?

Another question that might arise in the users mind is that is Blue Stack illegal or legal to use. It is clearly and purely just an emulator for PC and Mac, unlike cheat/hack engines etc.

Nintendo, Gameboy and other such emulators are illegal because they need to include software copies of the physical game system hardware ROMs to work. See this mentioned below Bluestacks reddit comment:

In that case it would require a copy of the devices firmware to operate. That copy makes it illegal. Therefore, if you are wondering that is Blue Stacks safe and legal? The simple answer is YES!

BlueStacks against Different Anti-Virus Software

With numerous concerns surrounding BlueStacks, we decided to test it against different antivirus and look for any signs of malware and viruses.

Fortunately, the software came clean and there were no signs of any malicious elements.

Blue Stacks against Different Malware Protection Software

To be on the safe side, we ran another test and this time against malware protection software. At times, antiviruses fail to pick up annoying malware such as VX Vault, ZDB Zeus, Phishtank, etc.

Therefore, the second test came clean as well and Blue Stacks did not contain any form of malware.

Why is BlueStacks so Slow?

BlueStacks needs at least 2GB of RAM and a minimum of 4GB of hard disk to perform at its optimal level. Furthermore, malware already present in your computer might affect the performance.

The previous versions of Blue Stack had complaints of being slow. However, the company is continuously improving and upgrading their software.

To have the best user experience, download the latest version of Blue Stacks from their official website.

If you are facing lag and delay during game play then there are a couple of ways to improve your experience on BlueStacks:

• Allocate more RAM and CPU in engine settings
• Update the graphic drivers of your computer
• Close all other applications running in the background
• It is also possible that your anti-virus is making BlueStacks laggy, check its settings

What’s new in BlueStacks 4?

With new BlueStacks 4 version, you don’t have to sit near to the charging socket because your phone has a low battery or to turn on “do not disturb” feature, so you don’t get distracted during intense gaming.

The latest version of this Amazing Android emulator has some amazing updates that will take your gaming experience to the next level with lower hard drive usage, less usage of CPU power and incredibly improved gaming performance:

Some of the key features of the latest BlueStacks 4 are as follows:

Super Speedy Performance

• The new BlueStacks 4 is almost 8 times faster than Blue Stacks
• Perform 6 times faster than Samsung Galaxy S9 and S9+.

Simpler Interface and Incredible UI

• Drastically change interface makes BlueStacks more complete Android emulator since this new version offers other options too and not just gaming.
• The core UI is dedicatedly created for making the gaming experience more enhance and smooth like never before.
• Add-on Features like BlueStacks Store, Quests, available at will, consume resources only once launched

Improved Key Mapping

• Manage key controls with the all-new Game Controls Window
• Key Controls divided into categories for easier navigation
• Play with default controls or create based on your preference

Best BlueStacks Alternatives

If you think Blue Stacks isn’t useful for you and having issues while playing games then you can try some good programs like BlueStacks from our guide.

Is BlueStacks Legal and Trusted – FAQs

How to Use BlueStacks

Following steps will help you regarding how to use BlueStacks:

• First download the BlueStacks software on your Windows or Mac  device.
• After downloading the software, double click on the folder and install it.
• Once you installed BlueStacks, the next step is logging in with your Google account, just like you’re setting up any other Android smartphone or tablet.
• After logging in with your Google account, now you can download games via Google Play Store and fulfill your cravings.

How to Update BlueStacks

BlueStacks updates is very easy thing to do. following video will help you how to update BlueStacks without losing your data:

FAQs-Is Blue Stacks Safe and Legal?

Is BlueStacks free or paid?

The basic version of Bluestacks is entirely free to use. You can download from Blue stacks official website. However, for premium features, you need to subscribe for its paid version.

According to BlueStacks developers, this Android emulator is capable of running 96% of apps that are available on Google Play Store.

Is BlueStacks any good?

BlueStacks is a well-known emulator that brings that latest version of Android to your PC, allowing you to play the latest mobile games and use favorite apps.

Those are big claims, but BlueStacks 4 delivers an excellent Android experience on Windows. BlueStacks basic version is free to download and is available on Windows and Mac.

Is it safe to use WhatsApp on BlueStacks?

Yes, you can use WhatsApp on Bluestacks safely since it is one of the best Android Emulators in 2019. However, to use WhatsApp on PC or Mac, you need to download Bluestacks first.

Does BlueStacks ruin your computer?

As I mentioned in this article above that, there are some specific systems configurations required to run Blue stacks on your device.

However, according to some users, it may harm your system in some cases. Such as does not download Bluestacks installer from the official website.

In this case, there is a high chance that you might install Bluestacks with malware, which could harm your system.

Therefore, I would recommend you to always to install any software only from their official site.

Is AndY better than BlueStacks?

This is based on your needs that which one of them is better for you. If you are looking for a lightweight and straightforward Android emulator that is capable of running light games, then you must go for Bluestacks.

However, if you are looking for an Android Emulator that can run heavy games and requires advanced features too, then Andy must be your choice.

Is Bluestacks Safe For Windows 10?

Yes, Bluestacks is completely safe to use. I had also used it.

Bluestacks is basically a Android Emulator for PC which enables the Windows OS user to run Android apps on his Windows OS system.

So, use Bluestacks freely

Conclusion

The best part about BlueStacks is that it is completely free. However, if you wish to purchase the premium version there are a variety of benefits.

• A special premium priority support channel is available for them to ask questions and get answers
• Subscribing to premium subscription disables advertisements of sponsored apps on Blue Stacks
• One premium subscription can work on multiple PC’s using the same account credentials

BlueStacks is one of the only best emulators that actually work and deliver performance. It has great reputation and the user experience is amazing! Blue Stacks being backed by tech giants, one can surely trust this application and have positive expectations from it.

The post Is Blue Stacks Safe and Legal for PC and Mac? Bluestacks Review 2019 appeared first on Online Privacy Tips.

First, it’s necessary to understand how spy software works. Here are some actionable tips to identify how cell phone spyware manifests itself on the target device.

Learn What Spy Software Can Do

Spy applications operate in a stealth mode. Their icon is not visible on the home screen. Some apps recommend parents to leave the icon and inform children that they will be monitored. Or, managers when monitoring employees can leave it on the corporate phone’s home screen. Workers are usually informed that the company’s property is being supervised.

Spy software provides the following spectrum of monitoring features:

• GPS location tracking. Users can find the phone’s location and this way pinpoint the current whereabouts of its owner.
• Geo-fencing. The feature allows putting virtual perimeters around safe and dangerous areas on the app’s map.
• Internet activity monitoring. Spy apps monitor sites, social media and their messengers, bookmarks.
• Online filters. It’s about sifting through any content that comes up in front of children or other target people.
• Installed apps monitoring. They are visible to someone who uses cell phone spyware. Users can block them as well.
• Instant messengers monitoring. Spy apps track chatting via the most popular messengers. Also, they show the timestamps.
• Reminders, calendar monitoring. The service’s customers can have a look at someone’s calendar events, plans, and reminders.

Together with the question on the apps’ functionality, prospects ask whether it’s possible to spy on someone without actually taking a device in a hand.

Can someone spy on a phone without access to it?

Spyware’s concept of monitoring includes a remote access to a target device. A user goes to an online account within the service and stumbles upon the Control Panel. They can use a PC, smartphone, iPhone, etc. to access an online account. Furthermore, this could be another person’s device to log in to it. The only condition is the Internet connection.

For the record, when installing the app for the first time on an Android device, physical access is required. To install software on iPhones, there’s no need in physical access. But it’s mandatory to know another person’s credentials to iCloud. Also, if it asks two-factor authentication, then users need to take a phone just once. The further monitoring is being done remotely.

Detect the “symptoms” of spyware

When armed with the knowledge of spyware’ signs on the target device, an individual can easily identify it on theirs. Here are the four signs that will translate that someone is being spied on:

Battery drain:

The app which runs in the background is energy consuming. Usually, the battery is draining much faster than it used to in a very short period of time. After a while, owners have to change a device.

Random Data Usage:

Spyware sends a lot of data from a cell phone to the Control Panel. As a result, the phone seems to be using a lot of data. If there are weird inconveniences and apps drain too much data, spyware might be involved.

Websites acting strangely:

Your online experience changes in the overall: sudden popups and ads show up while visiting sites. Also, fraud sites appear instead of real ones. They fish for users’ personal information.

Phone being slow:

Suddenly, for no obvious reason, a device gets slower. Spy apps might make devices restart and update unpredictably. Strange apps might show up (a user did not set up) consuming the energy and using too much data.

Weird messages:

Some spy apps use SMS commands to block certain features in a device. It’s a sort of distant manipulation. When receiving such message, there are some figures there. But it’s an explicit code to block something.

Conclusion

If a user sees one or more of these sings, it means there has to be an urge to check for spyware infection. Even if it was not detected, phone’s owners will find out another source that drains the data, energy and influences negatively the device.

The post Cell Phone Spyware: 5 top signs saying your device is infected! appeared first on Online Privacy Tips.

Moreover, due to the huge influx of Facebook users on downdetector it also taking time normal than usual to respond.

Users are reporting that their News Feed page is either not loading for them or that they are getting a “something went wrong” page.

The hashtag #FacebookDown also appears to be gathering momentum on Twitter.

Facebook is a social network where members share messages and status updates with online friends. The network also offers a platform for third party developers.

One person tweeted: “My Facebook isn’t working, so the first thing I did was go to Twitter to confirm that, yup, FacebookIsDown!”

The post Facebook is Down – Users Reporting Global Blackout of Social Media Giant appeared first on Online Privacy Tips.

World Cup 2018 official football sponsor warned customers on 28/6/2018 regarding cyber-attack on its official US website. The data that is harvested by hackers includes user’s id, contact information, encrypted passwords. Furthermore, Adidas Official also cleared in its statement that they don’t detect any credit card and fitness information was breached.

According to one customer, the official statement he received from Adidas on Thursday stated “We are alerting certain consumers who purchased on adidas.com/US about a potential data security incident. At this time this is a few million consumers,”

However, Adidas is not a first victim of cyber-attack in past few months. Multiple organizations already faced this kind of data breaching by anonymous hackers. It creates serious concern for other organization who sells their product via their official website.

According to Adidas Officials, “it found out about the problem on Tuesday, when “an unauthorized party” claimed to have acquired some of its consumer data.” However, we are still in process of analyzing to find out who is behind this cyber-attack.”

The post World Cup 2018 Official Football Sponsor “Adidas” Alerts US Customers about Data Breach appeared first on Online Privacy Tips.

Shava Nerad is one of the brains behind the creation of Tor. She worked hard in educating people about the importance of data privacy, especially in a scenario where your online privacy is not safe from hackers and others alike.

After reading the answers and information provided by privacy evangelist “Shava Nerad,” you will have goosebumps for sure. So without creating more curiosity, let’s move forward towards the answers provided by Shava Nerad.

Disclaimer: The views, opinions, and positions expressed in this article are that of the interviewee alone and do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions or positions of Onlineprivacytips.co or the author thereof. Assumptions made within the analysis are not reflective of the position of Onlineprivacytips.co or any of its team members.

Let’s start with you. Who is Shava Nerad? Where were you born?

I was born in Dayton, Ohio, in the United States. My parents lived in a tiny town, Eldorado, about 35 miles away, and when my mother went into labor, my father was still at university. So a neighbor was the local farm animal veterinarian — he got my mom in his WWII surplus jeep, and they drove over the rural bumpy roads to the Dayton hospital. Once or twice they stopped, and he checked my mom because they thought I would have to be delivered in a corn field!

But we made it!  I was so ready for my appearance that, atypical for children in the 50s here in America, I was a “natural birth.”  No anesthetics.  No time!  Lol.

What was your early life like? Any particular incident that helped shape your personality or views about the world?

Oh, well, so many. When I was born, my father was getting his divinity degree at Oberlin, and teaching high school math and science. There is a picture of me as a babe in arms cradled in the folds of his graduation gown. But he was an older student — nearly 40. I had two brothers who were teenagers in the 1960s, and my parents were born in the 1920s, so they were kids in the Great Depression. My mother’s father was born in 1882. My family was a mural of history, you know?

And my father had become a Universalist minister in part because of their connection to social justice, in the years before the merger of the Unitarian and Universalist denominations. He was active in causes such as the labor movement as a young man (as was my mother and her father, and her half-brother who introduced my parents).

My dad worked night security for the Southern Christian Leadership Coalition (SCLC) and Martin Luther King, Jr. on the summer marches in the 60s.  The night security detail was all clergy, all sworn to strict nonviolence.  It was like having your father off at a war.  Those days were much like today, with “Communism” a frame for nationalism and white supremacist views and racism and anti-migrant sentiment.  Every protest was termed a “riot,” and violence by the authorities was commonplace and minimized, and vigilante violence was tolerated and hardly reported.

I remember when my dad was going off to the Salem-Montgomery March, he was all packed and waiting for his ride, and at that time I was just starting public school.  I told him that if people just let their kids play together they’d see there was nothing to be afraid of and they could be friends.  My dad told me that someday I’d get my chance, but right now it was his turn to go talk to people, talk truth to power.  But if I could grow up and get the chance to talk to all these people in a clear voice, I could go out and change the world.

Maybe it was one of those throw away remarks, but I took it to heart.  I decided it was a calling, vocation.  I listened, and learned, and tried to absorb everything I could about how to make people understand how not to hurt each other (while, simultaneously, having the crap being beat out of me at public school over my dad’s activism!  Sigh.).

My parents and many others involved with the SCLC were under FBI (COINTELPRO) surveillance.  Years later, my father requested his FBI file from those days — it came in a copy paper box, ¾ full, heavily redacted.  Much of it was facsimiles of stenography notebook pages, redacted, but you could tell he recognized the handwriting.  In 1964, all surveillance took was maybe $5 in someone’s pocket, a steno pad, and a #2 pencil.  Today, it’s billions of dollars.  Kind of funny, isn’t it?

People think of MLK’s work in saintly terms often today, but at the time, he was viewed as a terrorist, criminal, a troublemaker, nearly — even by blacks here.  He was stirring up trouble for everyone, right?  Inviting retaliation.

The year 1968, I was tiny, eight years old.  I wanted to be either an astronaut (which everyone told me as a girl was impossible) or a great civil rights leader like King, or my dad (yes, well, he wasn’t “great” but this is a girl looking at her dad, right?).  Then when the King was assassinated, we all held our breath waiting for the nation to erupt in riots.  It didn’t really happen.  Two months later, Bobby Kennedy was shot in California — he was the pro-civil-rights lead candidate for the Democratic nomination for president.

Oddly, everyone told me I couldn’t be an astronaut because it was too dangerous.  But being a civil rights leader seemed so much more dangerous to me.  Suddenly in 1968, at eight years old, it seemed too dangerous.  Maybe, I thought, I should think about being a speechwriter, or do something in the back room, rather than be one of those people giving the speeches with a target painted on them.

Not many people outside of the movement remember this, but Peter Edelman was Kennedy’s aide and personal lawyer.  Marian Wright was the first black woman to take the bar in Mississippi, and was MLK’s personal lawyer. The two of them met through their connections in the civil rights movement.  Peter’s white, Marian’s black, and in a majority of states their marriage was still illegal, I think, in 1968 — “miscegeny.”  But despite the assassinations of MLK and RFK, they were married in DC a couple months later.  Again, many people worried that even the ceremony could be a target of domestic terrorism.  But it was safe.

Peter went on to eventually serve as HUD secretary in Clinton’s cabinet and resigned in protest over “welfare reform.”  Marian Wright Edelman founded the Fund for Children, the most powerful advocacy group for youth rights in the US.

When I lived in Portland, I got to know their son Jonah, who is founder of Stand for Children, an education advocacy group.  I was a state committee woman for the Dems and chair of budget and finance for Multnomah County.  I asked if he would have a talk, with his dad, on “Passing the Torch of Activism”.

You went to MIT. How was the experience? Please describe the experience of being among the best minds at one of the best institutions to learn technology.

I didn’t exactly “go” to MIT.  It was more of a “Good Will Hunting” experience.  I dropped out of Bryn Mawr at the end of 1977, and ran off to Boston to get a job in publishing.  I arrived on the eve of the Great Blizzard of 1978, and got caught on the MIT campus.  Holed up at the French and German House living group for weeks, I helped to organize running groceries into a nearby neighborhood using backpacks and cross-country skis, as a service project, and got to know a lot of folks stuck on campus through that.  My parents travelled to Vermont for a lot of my youth, so a little blizzard wasn’t going to keep me inside!

Out of this I met a young man who was very skeptical about my publishing ambitions — why would I want to do glorified secretarial work when I knew how to program?  He set me up with a job at Polaroid, doing computer operations and maintenance programming.  I told him I wanted to work with people, words and ideas — not with machines!  But the job offered twice minimum wage, and I was 18 with no degree.  Hmmm…

I thought, “Well, I can decide what to do later.”  So later, what I did was work with people, words, ideas — and machines.

That was Boolos, computational theory. He was in the habit of calling out questions to people by seating chart and adding your ability to answer to your grade.  I gave him a good answer, but he asked me to see him after class.  I was terrified. And I went down to the large slate covered desk at the pit of the amphitheater like classroom, and without looking up he said, “You’re obviously paying attention in class, but I don’t have you enrolled.  I need your forms, at least pass/fail, by this week.”

Shyly, I said, “Sir, I can’t do that.”

He looked up at me over his glasses.  “Why NOT?”

“I’m not enrolled.  I work in Tech Square, and sit in on classes over here.  I can’t afford tuition.”

He sniffed, looked back down at the pile of papers.  “Well, you don’t think this gets you out of problem sets do you?” But he made me bring the homework to him, because he couldn’t ask the grad students to grade a stealth student. That’s what MIT was like, and why something like the Open Courseware project is not any surprise at all.

What societies you were a part of at MIT? Who are some people that inspired you during that time?

I was very active in the MIT Science Fiction Society, the MIT Strategic Games Society (Betsy and I were the only two women involved in the late 70s), and the MIT Educational Studies Program.  But working full time, and attending classes, and not being a regular student, many traditional activities and societies weren’t open to me.

What made you become a privacy evangelist? What’s your opinion or observation about privacy in the post-internet era?

I often open lectures on privacy with this anecdote:  “I grew up as the daughter of a minister in a rural small town in Vermont, so I knew all about privacy issues growing up — this is not a new thing with the Internet.  And I was a teenager in that same town of 8000 people, so I also knew about maintaining multiple identities.”

People often think of privacy being a new thing, but it’s a human thing, a social thing.  And it’s very different to different cultures, really.

I grew up surrounded by a movement of people interested in social reform.  The formal nonviolence of the SCLC civil rights movement was not anti-government, but working toward uniting our people into the ideal of the Beloved Community — a community that understands one another with compassion.

Yet the government — at least, Hoover’s FBI — did everything they could to paint these people as anti-American, as “communists,” which is like calling someone a terrorist today.  They spied on us, famously they tried to blackmail and drive MLK to suicide.  This is all history!  It’s not “conspiracy theory.”  Much of it is in the Congressional Record.  It was just wrong.

My parents explained to me, that no one or very few people act because they believe they personally are evil, but they will do bad things because they are afraid, because they have different understandings of the world.  That hating them only hurts yourself, even the really awful harmful people.  You need to protect yourself, but part of that is protecting yourself from hate and fear.

Maintaining privacy for yourself, and for your reform/dissent group, when there is something really questionable going on, is a way to protect yourself and your cohort while you clean up the bruised parts of society, corruption, and people with really dangerous ideas about hurting others.

When I helped to boost Tor from an unincorporated open source group into a charitable nonprofit, I had already been involved for a decade in the digital divide (now digital inclusion) and digital rights community professionally.  When I first heard of the project it sounded sketchy, to be honest.  I wasn’t a great crypto person or anything.

They had no money.  One of the crypto guys paid me enough to keep my basic expenses — rent, food, utilities — for a couple months, until I could bring in some grants.  It was very scrappy!  But within a few months we had our tax exemption, and a few months after that we had millions promised.  It was a project that had only been pitched to the crypto and open source communities — and I brought it to journalism safety, human rights, democracy promotion, free speech and other groups who were the best and highest and the intended end users.

Are we heading towards a “Privacy Apocalypse”? What are the major changes that you foresee over the next 5 to 10 years?

Well, we need a change in how we think, and I’ve seen that happen over and over — so I’m not sure that the apocalypse isn’t avoidable — like any good dystopian idea, it’s one we need to use in order to avoid the reality!

Look, when I took on Tor, most people — if you mentioned online privacy, their first thought was “fear of strangers.” I led the change in the culture starting in 2006 where we started everywhere to pair privacy and security.

Privacy is what you preserve with your passwords.  Your bank records are private.  Your medical records are private.  And your credit card number is private.  The people who want to violate your privacy are criminals and unscrupulous people in government.

Before then, most of the people who were spokespersons for privacy were very private, themselves, and were often not very relatable to the average person.  I told people, “Privacy is a slider.  You give up a certain amount of privacy for services — my email is at Google.  I like their service.  I also criticize it.  You are never going to be private or not-private as an absolute.  You used to see a raffle at the store and fill out a slip of paper, and they sent you spam in the post. Just a graying bookworm.

So here’s an example where we changed public opinion on privacy.  It will change again.  The problem is, privacy advocates are working with small budgets for outreach and media exposure.  We have to rely on news events to propel us into the public eye, for the most part.

Google, Facebook, all of the people who profit from the public becoming the aphid cattle on the rosebush, being harvested for honeydew?  Those who are the ants tickling the aphids will pay millions to promote ideas that slip people into easily sacrificing their privacy.  And Google and Facebook are essentially the biggest honeypots in the world.  Most users have no idea that they are the cattle, not the customers, there.

So it will take some series of events, like Equifax — why didn’t that lead to more privacy talk?  Well, I think because of the dumpster fire in DC right now.  But when we aren’t saving American democracy from itself, perhaps we’ll have time for this.  (Why yes, I do have opinions, lol.)

Do you think Artificial Intelligence and Internet of Things will open new doors for evil than good in terms of privacy & security?

Here is another area where events will drive the conversation.

For AI?  Already we have a crash in California with a self-driving car.  The Teamster’s Union president says he is not worried about self-driving trucks because, you know, airplanes have had autopilot for decades, and there are still two pilots in every 747.

And I have followed AI since the 70s, when I arrived in Boston and worked a few yards from the MIT AI Lab in Tech Square, and had friends who worked at Symbolics.  In the late 70s, we were just as close as we are today to a great breakthrough in AI.

And just as far from truly understanding what human intelligence is.

What we’ve created is a very advanced form of cybernetics.  There is nothing natural about artificial intelligence, and we don’t know how to make it like natural intelligence.

What it is is very very fast computation and database manipulation, and essentially if/then and case statements.  None of it has transcended the Turing machine.

But ask a dozen people on the street and you will find people who truly believe that animatronic toys like Sophia, who is a Siri-like personal assistant in a literal Disney Imagineer robot and has been granted Saudi citizenship?  They’ll tell you that these creations are imbued with animistic life.  These are the dangers of AI, these Mary-Shelley-Frankenstein myths.

It’s not the ethical responsibility of the creators, or the government.

It’s an artifact of the algorithm.

Not Facebook’s fault that people who promote racial divisions and strife buy ads on their social network.  It’s the algorithm.

Well, the algorithm is there to save them from hiring human beings.  Maybe they need to hire more humans?  That isn’t paranoia against technology, it’s preventing them from using some weird contortion to deny ethical responsibility — to minimize staff and duck responsibility to maximize profits, and present the deflection of blame on the mythology of AI.

This is the great danger, not the technology, but how we think about it, as a society.  None of this is a danger, but that we use it.  It’s a tool.

Likewise with the Internet of Things — we had KayPro automated homes in the early 80s.  SNMP (Simple Network Monitoring Protocol) allowed for some amazing set ups and the first internet controlled vending machine, also back in the 80s.

KayPro was LAN.  SNMP was fairly esoteric, but not much different from today’s IoT — and expensive and complicated.  What’s changed is the economies of scale and simplicity of interfaces — and the literacy of the public and popularity of cell phones, home computers, and devices running “assistants” such as Alexa/Google Home and so on.

It’s not the evil of having your fridge hacked — it’s the evil of having people wanting to sell these things who have no interest in educating the public, until something bad happens.  Social responsibility has ceased to be a social mandate.  Entrepreneurs are encouraged to fail, and have no shame in moving from a failed project to the next, so why should they worry if the project they are working on is sketchy, right?

So every business in America is a time bomb, potentially.  I have lost faith in our business ethics, because of the objectivist ethics of Silicon Valley.

On the other hand, I am in my tiny studio apartment in subsidized elder housing, where I am often confined to bed with illness.  And on the bookshelf next to my bed?  There is an Amazon Echo Dot, playing WBUR-FM’s stream — my local public radio station.  When I can’t move from bed, I can control the music or news.  Alexa wakes me for my medicines when I am sleeping fitfully in my illness.  This device has added to the quality of my life immensely.

What’s your opinion about the recent attempt by the FCC to end “Net Neutrality”? How, do you think, will this affect the world wide web?

I am waiting to see how much the decision will be exploited.  And when it is exploited, we must move on those companies with extreme speed, or the impacts will be dire.

But we are not lost, we can make examples, and shut the impacts down.

I think Ajit Pai is completely without ethics regarding the public comment process, and I think everyone should follow the suits resulting from that brought by the attorneys general.  It’s a major area of corruption that is clear within the Trump administration and where people can give support and aid in the spread of ideas.

You were fortunate enough to have met Aaron Swartz. What do you think about him and his stance on Net Neutrality?

Well, net neutrality has been used to cover a broad set of issues.  In many ways you can say that net neutrality means equal access online and free speech online without artificial economic barriers to the net and public information.  So if you define it that way, Aaron and I came through our careers through sort of complementary paths — he was a geek who grew into an ethics fellow.  I have described my career as being one in “applied ethics” but that’s been expressed in technology and society.  But I am not an archgeek, in terms of technical chops, unless you consider social engineering to be technical, lol.

And that’s where Aaron and I came together.  We both understood how to look at a system, to think about society as systems theory, to translate it to others, and plan, and organize, and execute.

And we both were passionate about keeping the net from becoming an exclusive venue for the rich and powerful to set the rules.

If you look at him, me, Lessig, Carl Malamud (who far too often is left out of Aaron’s canonization story, unfortunately), the folks at EFF, the ACLU, EPIC, Amnesty and all the other digital rights and privacy groups?  There is a whole society of people like Aaron, and a whole career path for this work, and support network for anyone interested in working in this area as a volunteer.

It’s not marginal any more, within professional circles, but getting these ideas better known takes more than just talking in closed circles, in silos, on the web.  It takes resources, if we don’t want it to remain event driven by disasters and their reaction.

And me?  I got scared to death when I was eight years old.  Aaron didn’t.  So after PACER, when he got the Justice Department furious with him, the whole issue with JSTOR came up and as my dad would have said, “They were waiting for him to jaywalk.”  You know the saying?  It means the government is waiting for any legit infraction because they can’t take you down for the activism you’ve done that isn’t illegal.

I don’t believe MIT or JSTOR wanted Aaron punished.  I believe that an ambitious US Attorney, Carmen Ortiz, who had a record of staging show trials here, was trying to make Aaron the next notch on her gun.

She resigned and actually had the temerity to apply to Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government for a fellowship.  Well, if they sent away Chelsea Manning, at lest they rebuffed Ortiz too.

It was pretty common knowledge that she was in line for governor here.  She’d been named Woman of the Year by the Globe just before Aaron was arrested.  She’s never going to run for office.  We made sure of that.

Mourn, and organize.

Let’s suppose for a minute that Aaron was here today among us. Would you have partnered with him to save net neutrality, and what would your combined action plan be?

Oh my.  Well, I would be hard pressed these days to partner for anything.  It takes operational capacity!  It’s like a war room — you are busy 18 hours a day a lot of the time.  It’s a lifestyle.  I certainly would have lent advice and contacts.  But such leadership is multi-valenced, it’s incredibly exciting.  It’s a game. It’s theater.

And it’s incredibly improvisational.  It’s hard to describe what I might do because, not being in that situation the “fog of war” of the situation is vast, and I don’t know who the allies, the interested parties, all the issues that are of important to them — so many factors.

I teach a class called, “How to Save the World in Your Spare Time,” and one of the “tools” I teach is to view every issue as a “civic ecology,” where you think of an issue as being surrounded by interested parties.  And then you say, ok, how are these groups are connecting or who are they connecting to by power, influence, or resources?  Anywhere there’s a line drawn, there’s a place you can insert influence yourself, disrupt them if required, draw attention to a problem if you must — plenty of problem solving and planning, right?  It’s a huge amazing human puzzle.

And a game with real stakes.

It amazes me how many people I find who say, “Oh I love Game of Thrones!” or they read world-building fantasy or science fiction.  But they think politics is boring.

It baffles me.

You were the founding executive director of the Tor Project. How did it all start? Who were the key people behind the project?

Well, first off, I only founded the nonprofit as executive director.  The tech started in the 90s at the Naval Research Lab as a tool for military intelligence to “phone home” over the open internet.

But there’s a problem with an online anonymity tool for military intelligence that is only used by military intelligence.  It has a fingerprint — anyone can tell you’re using it.  So sure, you have a special costume to hide your face, but you’re Batman standing on the roof, with a spotlight behind you.  Everyone can see you’re there.  Not very anonymous, if you’re trying to hide, right?

They funded two grad students, Roger Dingledine and Nick Mathewson, who were getting their doctorates at MIT, to rework it for general release.

Paul was a great mathematician, but he wasn’t really a network guy.  So Nick and Roger had to rewrite the software from the bottom up, really, but the basic conception was still intact.

But when the guys graduated, they had no funding.  EFF stepped up and said, “We usually get money, but this project is too important — we’ll give you funding for a year, but in that time you need to raise funds, and get self-sufficient.”

Well Roger and Nick went to hacker cons, open source cons, and people cheered, but they didn’t give them much money.  At the end of a year, they were strapped.  Nick went to work for PGP in California, and Roger was consulting.

A couple friends of mine had the idea of being the “Red Hat” to Tor. They would create a device that would be a Tor edge router (a device you can now get with a Raspberry Pi for nearly nothing). And sell it for a good chunk of change, along with a support contract. To groups like investment banks who want to obscure their traffic.  And they’d get government grants for both sides of the house, to support Tor development and the business.

“Hey,” they thought, “Shava writes grants!”  So they called me in.

The guy who was talking to Roger kept talking to Roger.  And talking to Roger.  And talking to Roger.  Meanwhile, I’m holding my availability and not finding much short term stuff.  So I finally say, “Can I go to the next negotiation?”

Well, it’s a little like a Vulcan at one end of the table, a Ferengi at the other, and I’m Dianna Troy in the middle.  My friend, who was a great VP of Sales, was just not getting Roger, who was a hugely idealistic geek.  Their priorities were just not on the same plane of reality.  Finally I got to my friend that the software wasn’t ripe to be offering to high end business clients without pulling the devs into support so much that they couldn’t continue development — unless he gets a couple of six figure support techs.  So likely the project wasn’t a go.

“You’re supposed to be on my side!”  “I am.”

Roger offered me a ride home.  Parked outside my apartment, we ended up talking for nearly two hours.  I was so impress with his vision and devotion to this project.

He wanted to get Nick to come from California to meet me.  A couple weeks later, the three of us met in a coffeeshop — Nick later confessed he was ready to hate me.  My CV looks very straightforward. And these were two young men who felt that they had a lot of push-back from conventional sources.  But within a half an hour, Nick and I bonded (I was happy to be at his wedding a couple years later — we remain great friends).

It started with the three of us — and thousands of volunteers.

How has Tor contributed to digital world?

The great temptation is to simply say, “No one knows and that’s our strength.”

Tor was created at first to help US military intelligence. But it can’t keep just one group of people truly anonymous. It’s a bit like they were wearing Batman outfits and backlit, standing on a rooftop, you know?  There they were, in a costume and mask, but still a very clear target.  To be truly anonymous, you need to be lost in a crowd.

So the military gave the software over to open source, and our purpose became to make it available to journalists, human rights workers, activists in labor, democracy building, reform movements, all kinds of free speech, as well as general privacy applications.

When we distributing the open source version, people could do the sort of thing you do with Tor by using single proxies. But it was easy to trace, or they could use botnets (networks of malware infected computers) as multiple relays, but these are generally control by criminal hackers or even large crime syndicates.

Now, imagine you are, say, a journalist in some hot spot somewhere, and you want to use the net to file your story, back to your editor.  But you don’t want the hostile dictator or some military to know where you are, because they don’t like that journalists are reporting on war crimes or collateral damage or something?

Do you want to, say, go to the Russian mafia and say, “Please let me rent the use of your botnet so I can file my news story here, without being detected by the local authorities, and I’ll pay you [this much]?”  What’s to keep them from going to the local authorities and saying, “Hey, we know where this journalist is, and for [this much plus a little more] we’ll betray their location to you.”  They might even get paid twice that way, right?

So if you are a crook, you might want to go to the botnet brokers, but if you are an honest person, you need a way to stay private so that no one can reveal your location, so that there is no intermediary.  And that’s where Tor comes in.

And sure, petty criminals can also use Tor.  Big time criminals use leased fiber, just like big banks and financial institutions do. And you will never find them on the Tor network.  They are “B2B” — Business to Business. Not these B2C or Peer to Peer petty criminal enterprises you find on the darknet.

The drug exchanges and so on may sound big. But they are nothing compare to the international arms, drugs. Counterfeiting and human trafficking and so on. We know are happening safely immune to detection on private fiber.  But since those are immune to detection, Interpol and the FBI and so on are incredibly fond of making headlines busting crime on servers using Tor.

And they always mention it, as though it was a big deal. Where you will never hear an identity theft ring in Bangalore caught  for running an IRS fraud ring running on Microsoft IIS. Even if that is the best architecture for international phone solicitation, say.

It’s all about the law enforcement budgets, heh.  They have to show that they can bust some organizations in these international drugs trades and so on.  And they will never bust the big fish on the blind fiber.

So Tor has to sit by and bear the abuse. Even though you never hear about a journalist, or a human rights worker, or a woman working for women’s rights. And you know, that’s amazing and wonderful. I hope you never do.  You can go to the websites of the Committee to Protect Journalists, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International or hundreds of NGOs and they are distributing or recommending the use of Tor.

Did you know, during Tahrir Square protests, that the people “organizing on Facebook” as they reported in the media, were using Tor?  I mean, think about it.  If they were organizing on Facebook, the government controlled the telecoms.  They would have been traced, rounded up, and *poof!* That would have been it.  But it was an Arab Spring because they used Tor, and the Egyptian authorities couldn’t track the organizers.

This is true right on down to Syrian resistance, to bloggers in dictatorships all over the world.  To people submitting information to projects like Wikileaks. Or the many other journalist dropboxes that followed that seminal project at newspapers, at investigative journalism collaboratives, at magazines.  You can even get to Facebook on the dark web. If your country blocks it (or if your company firewalls Facebook use and you want to play Farmville at lunch!).

What is Dark Web? How can someone differentiate between dark and deep web? The common impression or misconception about the dark web is that it’s a hub of illegal activities. Is it really so?

The deep web is simply the web that is not visible by typing in a URL.  This is probably most of the web.  That might be URLs that require password access. or web pages that develop on the fly by scripts or retrieved by scripts or are behind firewalls of various sorts.  That’s a lot!  For example, you might have to be local to a school to be able to see certain web pages.  If you aren’t at that school, those pages are deep web.  If you’re at the school, they aren’t under those conditions.  There’s nothing really mysterious about that.  The deep web is really just “web pages behind a door” of some sort.  It sounds spookier than it is.

The dark web is made up of pages on cryptologically hidden overlay networks, primarily the .onion hidden network on the Tor network.  An overlay network is a network that operates as a network on top of the tcp/ip network of the Internet, piggy-backing.  Examples include BitTorrent, Akamai, and Tor. All of which have servers in overlays that aren’t simply web servers using http(s):// but which require a different client/server.

In Tor’s case you need a cryptologically hidden overlay client for Tor Hidden Services, and you go to sites that use the .onion extension instead of the .com extension. And the addresses are usually a string of numbers that is very user unfriendly. Which you get from a hidden service directory.  I’m not going to go deeply into this — you can find more info on the Tor website at https://torproject.org.

Many things you would find on the dark net are illegal services. And it seems to be a sport for people to go looking for them.  The dark net is much smaller than the open internet, and people will just pick an address and go there.

Now, let me tell you a secret.  If you pick an internet address, a set of four numbers: xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx?  And you just plugged it into your browser bar, and went there?  It’s very likely that you would land on a porn site.  There’s a song called “The Internet is for Porn,” and I’m rather afraid it’s true.  In some countries whatever porn you find would likely be illegal.

Caveat emptor.  I don’t wander around neighborhoods wandering into random houses.  I don’t recommend doing anything like that on the dark web either.  As I said earlier, there are versions of free speech sites, Facebook, various magazine and other journalistic sites, political art sites, support chats for incest survivors. And various applications that require high privacy,…and then there is a lot of terra incognito.

I compare it to Harlem during prohibition or the Harlem Renaissance here in the US.  People came for the jazz, the art, the clubs. But they didn’t wander down the alleys. If they didn’t know the neighborhood, and they didn’t knock on a door. If they didn’t know the password. And just what kind of joint they were visiting.  Some of the most amazing places aren’t lit by the brightest street lamps.  But stay safe, and be sane about things.

What tools do you recommend to maintain privacy on the internet besides Tor? Do you believe a VPN service can help?

It entirely depends on your requirements.  A VPN is particularly useful if your privacy requirements are not super high (after all the VPN operator can see what you are doing, right?). But your performance requirements are more important.

Everything in security is a trade off.  Convenience is on one end, and security (and privacy is just a form of security) is on the other.  In the middle is user operational security and education.

What’s your opinion on Edward Snowden and Julian Assange? Do you believe what they did is good or in the favor of humanity?

I am pretty sure that Snowden’s work is well intentioned.  I am more and more disillusioned with Assange as time goes on.  But more than any of this, I have become overwhelmingly sad about the “goldfish” memory of the general public.  Whatever these two, or Manning, or Binney/Stark/Weibe, or any of the whistleblowers and advocates do, it’s nothing without public engagement and action.  And there’s just not enough — for every scrap of engagement. There’s a pie slice of enthusiastic sacrifice of rights on the altar of Big Data or Big Brother.

We used to joke that you could ask people, “Would you give up your personal data to the government or big business?” and people would look outraged and say “HELL NO!” then you present them with a CGI form that says, “CHECK HERE (and give us the right to your genome) AND YOU’LL GET A FREE BIG MAC!”

And they’ll think, “Wow!  A free Big Mac!  Count me in!” and sign away the rights to their genome (or first born or whatever) and never think twice.

But you know, I think times have changed.

Now, I think most people wouldn’t say HELL NO! first, lol.

Besides you, who do you recommend our readers to follow to know more about online privacy and security? What communities should they join? What publications should they read?

https://staysafeonline.org/resources/ is a good place to go for anyone at any level to get the basics.

https://eff.org is my go-to source for online rights information and https://aclu.org too,

https://epic.org, https://cdt.org, and https://privacy.org are more rights advocacy groups to follow.

Here’s a slightly out of date but pretty cool twitter list of cybersec stars:

https://www.darkreading.com/vulnerabilities—threats/10-cybersecurity-twitter-profiles-to-watch/d/d-id/1325031

And Dark Reading is pretty cool in general.

To be honest, I’m behind on the field in general, though — since retirement. I’ve spent more time on public policy, politics, and rights work, than on privacy (per se) and security.  Our political situation in the states has been…interesting times.  And if you spend six months not tooling on things full time you are so out of date!

What advice would you give to a person like me who wants to become a privacy advocate like you? Where should I start? What books should I read?

To be honest, what I would recommend isn’t reading, but participating in academia and (hacker) conferences and development groups for privacy tools.  Interact with people, not static dead trees, as it were.  This field moves so fast!  But the vanguard of privacy tends to be the EU, as much as I have listed a lot of resources in the States (after all, I am American, so I tend to be less Eurocentric — my battlegrounds aren’t there).  Remember that these are multidiscipline struggles.  We need lawyers, hackers, public policy folks, politicians, writers and graphic designers. To deal with the problem of privacy for the coming generation. Which is that we want to promote privacy “hygiene” on basically a tiny budget. When the interests of all these major governments and companies like Facebook and Alphabet have their budgets arrayed opposite us?

We are David to this Goliath.  Code can’t save us, by itself.  We need to be a thousand times as creative and to be world changers!  We need to change the culture. To bring up people who are like the Rachel Carsons, the Marie Curies, the Mohandas Gandhis of privacy in whatever disciplines they emerge from.

Could that person be you?  Could you find that person and help them?  The odd thing is, that the champions of privacy have to be public. They have to be willing to be community organizers, they have to be passionate enough to take public risks.

Privacy isn’t on or off. It’s a slider.  Sometimes it’s a currency.  A particle and a wave, lol.  And sometimes you have to spend some of your privacy so others can preserve theirs. That will be the story of the next generation of privacy advocates.

The post War on Privacy, Tor and Forgotten Hero: An Interview with Shava Nerad appeared first on Online Privacy Tips.

This one could fulfill your desire of using one contact number on different platforms most handily and proficiently.

To provide detailed information about this fantastic app, we interviewed Burner app CEO and Co-founder “Greg Cohn”. And we are thankful to him that he answered our questions with extensive information. It will greatly help our audience to get the most of the app and use Burner app in most efficient manner.

Therefore, without wasting your time let’s move on to questions that we asked “Mr. Greg Cohn” during an interview and get look onto great interactive answers by him.

We do our best to ask most relevant questions about Burner app that would help you much to understand how this assist you in creating huge communication bridge by using just one contact number.

What Was the Core Idea/Reason behind the Creation of Burner?

My cofounder Will Carter and I were interested in the idea that we could make the phone app a lot more interesting by treating it more like software. We wanted to create a product that helps users manage their identity in the context of their mobile phones, and came up with the idea of giving them more than one phone line on a single device. Privacy was also a big part of our vision. We knew that disposable phone numbers could help people protect their personal information, by enabling them to simply “burn” the number if it ever fell into the wrong hands.

How has the Journey been for Burner and its Team Until Now?

We have been growing at a very healthy rate and have consistently been in the top couple of highest-grossing apps in our categories on both the iTunes and Google app stores. We’re constantly rolling out new features, not just for those looking for privacy, but also for entrepreneurs and business users who need a separate line for their businesses or side hustles. The team has been growing as well, and we’re continuing to hire in Los Angeles.

There are many Offerings in the Market Currently, What Makes your Burner App Different from them?

Burner is more than just an extra phone number, it allows you to seamlessly integrate your number with other apps and products that can help you streamline communication and get more work done, like Slack, Evernote and Google Drive. It’s also the first and only virtual phone number app to incorporate Nomorobo’s proprietary robocall-blocking technology. Nomorobo has the most comprehensive blacklist of known spammers and its system grows every day.

How would Customers know about this Differentiating Factor?

Customers can check out all of these features and more by visiting our website, https://www.burnerapp.com/.

What is your Perspective on the Matter that some Mobile Apps Protect Users with Malicious Intent?

As with any emerging technology, people will be creative about how they use it, but malicious uses are not the intent of Burner, and we’ve tried hard to design our app and our policies to prevent and discourage them An example of that, something we frequently get asked about is whether Burner can be used for telemarketing spam.  While telemarketing spam and robocalls are a huge problem [link fcc?], these scams are not happening on Burner, which intentionally has no automation tools for dialing phone calls. In fact our Nomorobo integration helps our users block robocalls. There are many other ways people can use Burner to protect the privacy of their phone numbers, and their reasons are legitimate.  That’s why we built Burner.

How would you Define “Privacy”? What is your Definition of “Online Privacy”?

Privacy has been a fluid concept since the beginning of modern civilization, but one definition that I really like — which comes from a famous US Supreme Court case — is the concept of privacy following the individual and being based on an individual having a “reasonable expectation of privacy” in a given situation. This originally applied to things like the content of phone calls but, in my opinion, should apply more broadly to data as well. As a more pragmatic illustration, let’s say you’re giving out your mobile number so that an ecommerce merchant can deliver you a package. Is it reasonable for them to sell it to a data broker who will in turn resell that to advertisers whose ads will follow you all around the web based on what you purchased from the original merchant? I think not — we think users should have greater control over that.

And there’s a lot of information that’s pretty easily available about many people out there. You can take our Burner Challenge to find out what publicly available information can be traced back to you just from your phone number. Utilizing apps like Burner is a great way to prevent your information from being stolen and keep your personal number private.

Do you Believe Online Privacy is Important for Today’s Online Landscape & Why is that so?

There are those who say privacy is dead, that we should get over it. I strongly disagree. Pew publishes some great data that shows people are increasingly concerned about their data being compromised, whether by corporations or malicious actors. I expect that to be even worse this year in the wake of the Facebook and Cambridge Analytica scandal, which is really an example of Silicon Valley at its poorest and most mercenary. The challenges of this only get worse as we upload our DNA willingly to ancestry apps, wear health trackers on our arms, and plug our medical records into the cloud.

In the long run, I believe companies will differentiate on this, because users care about it and will vote with their wallets. You can already see this to some extent with Apple. So we’ve planted our flag around the phone number as being a really critical piece of your personal information that a lot of people want and that is really useful to communicate with, but that you need to manage and control.

Any Tips that you would Like to Give for your Consumers to Protect their Privacy these Days?

The number one piece of advice I have is to try to be aware of what information you are giving out.  Obviously, the phone number is something we think people need to pay special attention too. People want to keep their phone numbers for decades and it is a huge hassle to change your number, and it is attached to all kinds of personal information and accounts. So do not use it for risky stuff; use Burner instead. You can easily create a second phone you can burn anytime if it is compromised, and setting up an account is simple and free.

The post Interview with C.E.O “Greg Cohn”- Idea behind the Development of Burner App appeared first on Online Privacy Tips.

Therefore we see ourselves blessed that Founder of the SnowHaze VPN “Yvan Monneron” take some time to give us some proficient information about why their VPN is unique from other VPN’s available in the market.

Moreover, to tell about how their VPN helps users to maintain their online privacy without getting into trouble. To provide some relevant information regarding how these VPN services work, how they keep your privacy secure, and what are the features that make SnowHaze unique from other VPN’s, we asked “Yvan Monneron” numerous questions.

Following are the list of questions we asked and there as it is answers given by “Yvan Monneron.” We hope that this interview will help you much to understand how these VPN’s are playing a vital role to maintain your online data privacy and also helps you to take a decision whether you might use SnowHaze VPN or not.

Question 1: What was the core idea/reason behind SnowHaze VPN?

We already had the SnowHaze Browser. We developed SnowHaze to expand our range of high-quality privacy products. SnowHaze VPN is designed to be ultra-fast and ultra-private.

Question 2: There are many offerings in the market currently, what makes SnowHaze VPN different from them?

SnowHaze VPN is completely different because we are the first VPN provider with Zero Knowledge Auth. All other providers want their users to log in to a customer account, which makes them uniquely identifiable. We can distinguish neither between users nor between sessions. This is realized in two ways:

• With our VPN using the OpenVPN protocol, we assign the same login credentials to all users. So they can still authenticate with the server, but the server cannot tell who it is, as it seems to be one single user.
• For our VPN using the IPSec protocol, the first approach was not possible. Therefore, we have to do otherwise to ensure the same level of anonymity. That is, every day every user gets 100 unique login keys, from which they randomly choose one for every session. Since a single login is only used once and we do not know who got which login credentials it is not possible to differentiate between users or to link to sessions together.

Question 3: How would customers know about this differentiating factor?

We try to be open and honest in every aspect. Of course, this is not enough, so our product is Open Source.

Question 4: Does SnowHaze VPN ask for photo identification, a picture of a credit card, or any other personal information from subscribers upon signing up for verification purposes?

Apple is in charge of the entire payment process, which happens with the user’s Apple ID. We do not need any credit card information, name, address, picture or anything else. Actually, we know nothing about who uses our VPN. It is true that it makes especially marketing difficult when you do not know your customers, but we chose this model to guarantee a high level of privacy.

Question 5: What are other products that you offer to your customers?

First, we started with SnowHaze Private Browser before developing our VPN. The SnowHaze Private Browser is the most private browser on iOS. We offer all privacy and security tools to protect against tracking, phishing, ads etc. We have built-in protection against Canvas Fingerprinting, Audio Context Fingerprinting, tracking scripts, HSTS Super cookies, cross-site scripting, mixed content, social media tracking and many more. SnowHaze tries to always connect via HTTPS and has by far the larger HTTPS preload list (>1Million sites). Users get a granular control of the settings, globally or per site basis, temporarily or permanently. A bit like No Script. Combining SnowHaze Private Browser with our VPN offers almost Tor like privacy and security but without loss of usability.

Question 6: How would you rate your products in terms of overall privacy scenario?

Honestly, it is hard to build in more privacy than we already have. However, we still try every day. We also try to do a good job all the way to the details, so I would say we are at the top regarding privacy. There are enough “privacy-focused” companies running Google scripts on their websites. We want to take another approach.

Question 7: What is Privacy according to you? (What’s your definition of Online Privacy)

Online privacy for me is the potential and ability to have full control of your personal data. You should be able to choose what happens with them and who gets them.

Question 8: What is your perspective on the matter that VPN companies are protecting users from mischievous intents?

Do you mean protecting users with mischievous intents? I think that VPN were not designed to be used for bad. Unfortunately, there are people with bad intentions abusing VPNs but it is not what a VPN was designed to be in the first place. It is like comparing it with a knife: it is primarily designed to cut stuff but sometimes still is misused to stab. However, it does not mean that we are going to ban knives.

Question 9: Why do you believe online privacy is so important for today’s online landscape?

I am certain that it is more important than ever. Although most of the generated digital exhaust might not be harmful today, it will be in the future. With the fast development of artificial intelligence, a plethora of information will be extracted from all the data collected in the past decade. It is better to be safe than sorry. We try on our side to develop different tool that use AI to protect privacy even better.

Question 10: How has user behavior changed around data privacy?

Supported by past and recent leaks and data scandal, the awareness for the importance of data protection is rising. It is great because the more people demanding better protection and regulations, the larger the pressure on large companies to stop their shady business with user data.

Question 11: Any Tips that you would like to give your consumers to help protect their privacy these days?

This cannot be summarized in one tip but if I have to give one it is to get interested with the subject and question all aspects of daily life where data is shared instead of accepting the imposed current practices, and I do not only mean online. Because most of the time we share much more information than needed.

Otherwise just the basic: use a secure browser, a VPN, a Password Manager, encrypted communication…

The post Interview with Yvan Monneron, Founder SnowHaze VPN appeared first on Online Privacy Tips.

However, just jacking up your defenses won’t do you much good, as you need to know exactly what to stop and what are the ways to secure your online personal information. You must understand the evolving landscape and extent of how much and from where you can be hit. The following are some of the most dangerous top cyber threats from the past year and ways through which you can resist getting affected by them in 2018:

EternalBlue Exploit (CC-1353):

The National Security Agency or NSA has been increasingly scrutinized in the recent past for damning allegations of undue privacy coups and unrecognized surveillance attempts, but the NSA suffered its biggest guffaw in 2016, when a hacking threat group revealed that they have stolen a high number of top-secret cyber security weapons from NSA’s trove.

This hacking threat group named “Shadow Brokers” acquired these tools by breaking into NSA’s secretive cyber wing titled the Equation Group, whose job is to hoard zero-day vulnerabilities in major operating systems.

After the reveal, Shadow Brokers announced that they would be selling these hacking tools off through auction on major internet ecommerce days like Black Friday and Halloween.

Among these highly dangerous hacking tools was Eternal Blue, an exploit that specifically targets weaknesses in the SMB system of Windows OS. It fhad the biggest potential to turn in the highest amount of damage to major system networks worldwide.

However, despite the swift action by Microsoft in issuing a cybersecurity patch in March 2017, a month before Shadow Brokers actually published it on hacking forums, this Windows exploit formed the crux of two of the biggest ransomware attacks of 2017 (See below).

The extent of damage caused by the revelation of this exploit has again ferociously ignited the debate towards the practices of security agencies worldwide to hoard vulnerabilities that can lead to major zero-day catastrophes, if compromised like in this case.

There might even be more powerful exploits lurking in the troves of such secret agencies, which if leaked, could spell a major disaster in the times to come.

WannaCry:

On May 12, 2017, the first major ransomware attack of the year hit the global network on an unprecedented scale, crippling major public and private sector organizations worldwide.

What started as a small infection on May 12, 2017 in South East Asia quickly spread its tentacles to wallop nearly 200,000 systems in a whopping 150 countries worldwide, creating a deadly cyber threat.

However, this time, the ransomware didn’t arrive through traditional methods. When checked, no evidence was found of a phishing hook, the most conventional procedure to plant a ransomware inside a system. Hackers exploiting the EternalBlue with a compromised SMB port was deemed as the primary starting point of the attack.

The scaling of the ransomware so quickly across major nations and organizations was duly assisted by the fact that many places didn’t employ the patch issued by Microsoft two months before the attack took place. This patch could easily have defended against the cyber threat.

In other places, the systems were found to be running older versions of the Windows OS, which Microsoft has stopped supporting, making it relatively easier for hackers to increase their reach by exploiting vulnerable systems.

Some major organizations were hit by the cybersecurity threat. The most notable among them was the National Health Service (NHS) in England and Scotland. Critical medical devices like MRI scanners stopped working, after the ransomware worm affected the system.

Others to have been hit included FedEx, Deutsche Bahn, Renault and Nissan Motor Manufacturing UK, all of whom had to shut down part of their operations to battle it out with the ransomware attack.

The damage incurred was estimated to be in billions of dollars, however, the quick discovery of a kill switch by researcher Marcus Hutchins and the swift manufacturing of emergency security patches by Microsoft, helped the affected to limit the damage to a wide extent.

Asking $300 in Bitcoin as ransom, the hackers managed to secure around 52 Bitcoin, which could have made them hit pay dirt, if they had kept them for the surge in Bitcoin prices later the same year. At the highest point of price, 52 Bitcoins could have been worth more than a million dollars at $19,783.06 per piece.

WannaCry has been attributed to have originated in North Korea and signifies how unconventional weapons, like OS bug exploits could become increasingly common in the years to come.

NotPetya:

While the WannaCry ransomware attack could have spurred organizations to make their systems more robust and prevent further problems, stemming from the EternalBlue exploit, many systems were still running without the patches being updated.

The result? Another attack by ransomware nicknamed NotPetya that exploited the same vulnerability to attack a large network of systems. But this time, the attack was more surgical in its motive and many online security experts have termed it to be an attempt to inflict damage on a certain enemy through a worm masquerading as a ransomware.

NotPetya attacked Ukraine with ferocity and more than 80% of the systems lay compromised within that country with Germany at 9%, being the second most affected country after Ukraine.

The hackers exploited Medoc, the predominant tax accounting package software in Ukraine, to sow bugs through the automatic update feature of the software. Once in the system, the worm affected every file found within the system domain, while the popular NotPetya ransomware would just have encrypted the Master File Table of the Hard Disk.

The damage to the infected systems was so high that it was impossible to regain many files and programs, because they had been completely wiped off or overwritten beyond the realms of recovery. From Boryspil International Airport to the State Savings Bank of Ukraine, the country felt a huge economic jolt in the wake of this unprecedented cyber-attack.

Ukraine blamed Russia for being behind the attack, while the latter denied involvement and said that it was among the major targets from the cyber threat. The attack was stopped the next day after starting on June 27, 2017.

Vault 7 by WikiLeaks:

Containing an even more exhaustive list of tools and documentation used by the NSA in their spying and cyber warfare domains than the ShadowBroker’s leak, Wikileaks released their latest data trove name Vault 7 on March 7, 2017.

The documents contained in the leak showed the extent to which users can be compromised. In there are ways to deploy Wi-Fi signals in charting out a device’s primary location, turning Smart TVs into listening devices. Also present are hacks to control and snoop into Mac OS just by exploiting the core base code.

The legitimacy of developing and harvesting these tools has come under serious scrutiny, since the leaks came to the fore. You can now find many discussions and debates on how to prevent cybersecurity threats and make online safety more robust.

The Deep Root Voter Info Leak:

Researcher Chris Vickery reported on June 19 that he had found a publicly accessible database of nearly 200 million US Voters lurking on the web.

When further prodded, it was revealed that a specialist firm named “Deep Root” was the real owner of the data and their team had misconfigured the Amazon servers on which the information was to be stored, resulting in the major embarrassment.

The firm quickly acted and the database vanished from where it was originally found, but the story exposed the extent to which even the best of firms specializing in data could be so lackadaisical when it comes to following cybersecurity protocols.

Other Major Cyber Threat Lapses from the Year Which Were Timely Averted:

• BroadPwn was a bug that could have compromised more than a billion iOS and Android devices had it been exploited, but the heap overflow cyber threat was discovered by a security researcher and the patches were issued in a timely manner.
• BlueBorne was discovered and disclosed by an IOT security firm Armis in September 2017. This could have led to 5.3 billion Bluetooth enabled devices in the world to get hacked into had the bug been found by no-do-gooders.
• In May, 9GB of private email data from then France’s Presidential Candidate Emmanuel Macron was released by hackers in an attempt to sabotage his campaign for the highest post in the land.

The cybersecurity threats of 2017 were a major wake up call for organizations and people across the world to do more and be extra vigilant when it comes to protecting important data and critical systems. Nearly all of these incidents were preventable through standard security practices but lags are what hackers are after and that’s exactly what happened in all of these reported attacks.

In 2018, the list of cyber threats could increase in numbers and strength. Subsequently, users are advised to be even more careful on handling their data troves and systems because the hacking world will pose even greater risks as they are fast becoming increasingly organized.

Wrapping Things Up

The word CaaS (Crime as a Service) will definitely gain greater leverage from cyber threats in upcoming times as attacks from Trojans, malwares, ransomware, bugs and zero day vulnerabilities will all be exploited in a more systematic manner than previously ever seen.

Never be offhand with your online security protocols or else be prepared to cough up Bitcoins. Either in major ransomware attacks or risk getting your data erased by a bug that you installed yourself believing it was an innocuous software update from your known product developer.

The post Cyber Threat Mistakes, Not To Be Repeated in 2019 appeared first on Online Privacy Tips.