PSA: Simple Security Measures

I’ve written a couple posts on security issues facing us under the fascist regime, here and here. I’ve received emails and texts all basically asking: “That’s a lot of information; can you just tell me what I should do? And remember, I’m not a techie.”

So here you go…

1. Your Phone #1

Install Signal and make all calls and texts that you can go through Signal. This means that the recipient also needs Signal. There are some calls and texts that will never go through Signal, like:

• Calls to/from your kid’s school

• Calls to/from your doctor’s office

• Texts from your credit card company saying there’s a questionable charge

• Ordering a pizza

• Etc.

These folks aren’t going on Signal.

But for your circle of friends, family and associates, this is the way to go. Set a target date of 1 January to get everyone linked up on Signal. Note that you have the option to download Signal to your phone AND place it on your computer, meaning you can text and call from your computer.

2. Your Phone #2

Download the iVerify Basic app here. With the basic version (it costs 99 cents) you can check your phone once a month to see if your phone has been compromised. They have a paid version that continually checks for various threats, but once a month should be good enough for most people.

3. Your Phone #3

The NSA has said for a while that everyone should completely turn off their cell phones once a week. This relates to decreasing zero-day hacks. There are some in the tech field who are now turning their phones off daily to preclude even more zero-day hacks. This should really be a no-brainer. Shut off your phone, leave it off for 60 seconds, and turn it back on¹.

4. Your Browser and Search Engine

Of the biggest browsers, your better bet is Firefox. It will work on computers, tablets and phones. There is a “new private window” function on the menu that clears your information when you close it, but does not make it anonymous. That is, instead of opening a new window, you can open a private one. If you use Firefox, be aware that the default search engine is Google.

A better choice is the DuckDuckGo browser. Again, available for computers, tablets and phones: there is no tracking. This is especially important when you search for things you want to keep private. DuckDuckGo uses its own proprietary search engine².

For really serious privacy concerns, there is the Tor browser. It’s probably the best for protection, but it won’t work with all anti-virus programs, and you will be unable to connect to certain websites that block it. In that case, you’d need to disable your firewall.

Most people use Chrome. Stats indicate it’s used by about half of all US-based users. Everything you do on Chrome is leveraged by Google/Alphabet. And if you use Google for searching on any browser, the search itself lacks enough privacy.

For fun, you can search the same innocuous thing on different search engines, and you’ll get different results. Google promotes various things that benefit their bottom line. They lost a major anti-trust case related to their search engine. Another is still ongoing.

While it’s not a privacy issue, the search results you see can be skewed. I wanted to buy a barn coat. So I searched “barn coat for women” in both Firefox and DuckDuckGo. While the Google search in Firefox stuck to major retailers, especially Amazon, DuckDuckGo presented many other alternatives. Think of this broadly as the difference between only going to department stores, or going to independent businesses³.

5. Your Modem and Router

A lot of people are confused about what is a modem vs what is a router⁴. For most of us, we have “the box” from our internet provider which houses both things. If you have your own, and you have a separate modem and router, you know more than I do.

But.

At base, the modem brings in the internet service to your house, and the router connects things like computers, printers, televisions, wireless things like phones, tablets, and potentially other things to the network.

By default, your wireless network is “discoverable” by others. For example, if you open the WiFi area in the Settings area of your phone, you’ll see all the other networks in range of your phone. You can hide your network so it is not discoverable by others. You can also set up a hidden, private network and a public (guest) network. The private one is used by the phones, computers, TVs, printers, etc. on it, and the guest network only allows people (to whom you give the password) to use your internet.

6. Your VPN?

If you have a corporate job, your company generally doesn’t let you do anything on the internal network (think intranet, email, expenses) unless you connect your laptop to the company VPN (virtual private network). You can set up a VPN in your home.

VPNs work by encrypting data through a “tunnel” which passes information from your home to the VPN’s server, and then on to the internet. A VPN will hide the contents of your web traffic from some observers and can make it harder for you to be tracked online. NO VPN can provide total anonymity. Think of a VPN as a “brown paper wrapper” — like certain types of packages might come wrapped in through the US Mule. They know that you’re sending/receiving something, but they don’t know what.

BUT.

A VPN has, at best, limited protection related to malware, social engineering scams, phishing sites, etc. Thus, you still need a solid anti-virus program, to be up-to-date on scams to which you can fall prey, and a solid password manager.

There are certain anti-virus programs that allow you to use their VPN programs. And many of the VPN companies have anti-virus programs.

In the past, VPNs have been leveraged for nefarious reasons. Like to be able to access streaming services in a certain country that are not allowed in one’s home country by using a VPN tunnel endpoint that appears to be in another country. (Don’t do that.) VPNs (especially those associated with Tor) have the ability to access the dark web. (Don’t do that either.)

So do you need one? Maybe. Do you know who knows more about you than anyone else? Your ISP, like Verizon, XFinity, Cox, etc. They know just about everything you do on the internet⁵. Where you bank. Who provides your medical services. Whether you have accessed legal services. If you do it online, your ISP knows about it. This link details a lot of the information to which ISPs have access.

A VPN bypasses your ISP. If you search for “Best VPNs”, you’ll find a lot of options, and the two that make more lists than any other brand are Proton and NordVPN. Both will cost money. Those VPNs would be on your router, and thus everything on that system is “VPN-safe”. You might also consider a VPN on a device, like your cell phone, for when you leave home and consider connecting to someone else’s WiFi.

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In answer to the question: “Jessica, what are you doing?”, here goes:

• I am asking everyone I know to download Signal, and have set a date of 1 January when I plan to transition as many calls and texts as possible to Signal⁶.

• I have downloaded iVerify, and run a scan. I put a tickler on my calendar to check monthly.

• I turn all my phones off daily. (It’s the dinner thing at our household. Also cuts down on interruptions from the outside while we have “couple time”.)

• I use both Firefox and DuckDuckGo, and the latter for searching anything I don’t want anyone to know about⁷.

• My husband is in charge of high tech in our house. He has set up a physical wired router for our equipment, and my work computers run on company VPNs.

• I never connect to public WiFi, and limit what I use my phone for when I am out.

I hope all the above was helpful to those who have been sending me questions.

Tomorrow’s post is on fear.

1. My husband is a fan of turning off all phones at the start of dinner, and leaving them all off until after dinner. (We both have multiple personal and work phones.) Like when we were kids and there were no phone calls allowed during dinner.

2. DuckDuckGo uses Bing as a search base but also uses their DuckDuckBot crawler to further refine their results.

3. That’s an inexact comparison because far down (several pages) in Firefox’s Google search are less mainstream choices, and DuckDuckGo does show Amazon, albeit further down the search results.

4. I am one of those people.

5. While they can’t see most information in https:// sites, they know where you went.

6. Rumor has it that it will be possible with Apple’s 18.2 upgrade to switch the native text and phone services to Signal, but I’ll believe it when I see it.

7. One of the things I do a lot of research on relates to medical topics. When friends and family get new diagnoses, and they want my input, I go to trusted sources and also check for the latest clinical trials, but I don’t want my ISP to think that I have that condition.