Part one of our four-part series on the various veillances to be aware of, how they operate and how you can reduce your exposure.
The Veillances Part One: Surveillance
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Putting our money where our mouth is with Plausible Analytics
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Many online businesses (especially online-only ones) rely on cookies and user tracking to profile who is and isn’t visiting their site, conversions from other sources and returns on marketing spend. This information is typically evaluated, and marketing efforts are pivoted based what patterns the data provides. Privacy Rightfully is committed to the privacy of its users and given one of our core mantras is making private browsing of the internet easy to achieve we’ve made a change to service this goal. We are pleased to announce we have removed Google Analytics and replaced it with Plausible Analytics. We believe, as do the good folks at Plausible Analytics, that website usage can be tracked without collecting personal data or personally identifiable information. Plausible allows for the following privacy advantages to our users: Site measurement is done anonymouslyCookies and persistent identifiers are not usedPersonal data is not collectedData is in aggregate form only...
The risks posed by Interactive Insurance Policies
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Introduction
There is an emerging trend of insurance companies leveraging IoT devices or their own surveillance-based devices to harvest more data from our daily lives with the promise of a cost saving (amongst other rewards). This is the typical ‘data for dollars’ business model trending at the moment whereby a product or service is free or discounted in exchange for user data. Let’s have a look at some of the risks this can pose.
The Five Eyes watching
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Since the Snowden revelations the scale of surveillance on ordinary citizens by the intelligence agencies of democratic western governments has been in the news and regularly debated. The Five Eyes alliance is arguably the biggest holder of the data gathered by the various surveillance programs and thus it’s worth knowing how the alliance is spying on you.
Metadata 101
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‘We kill people based on metadata‘- General Michael Hayden (former Director of the CIA & NSA) (1)
Introduction
We won’t pretend the quote above isn’t set at the top of the article intentionally to get your attention (but we hope it worked!). Metadata as a term doesn’t sound very exciting so we wanted to get your attention so as to not skip over this article. We hope you bare the quote in mind because as you’ll see metadata has many positive, important, and unavoidable uses in our daily lives which will make the quote even more disconcerting. We’ve also created and linked to a How-To Guide on removing metadata at the end of the article.
Malware 101
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This article is an introduction to the various types of threats that can find their way on to your device and cause you all sorts of grief.
Password Managers 101
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The final piece in our three-part series on password management. This article looks at Password Managers, what they are and if they’re worth using.
Setting Strong Passwords
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Building on a previous article, Password Hygiene 101, this article guides you in creating a strong password to support your newly established password hygiene habits.
Encryption 101
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It’s time for another instalment of our 101 series where we explain concepts and tools related to privacy and security in an introductory format and in plain English, avoiding all the technical jargon. Today we look at encryption!
Financial Surveillance: Today’s way of transacting may be tomorrow’s buyer’s remorse
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Governments are pushing to take cash out of circulation and move toward a fully cashless society. This article dives into what this might mean for your privacy and your ability to choose what you spend your hard-earned money on.
