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The AAA Strategy for Privacy and Digital Security

Written by Brad Deflin | August 04, 2020

The dog days of August 2020 start fittingly enough with a hurricane named Isais, which in Spanish means "God Is My Salvation." In turn, salvation means "preservation or deliverance from harm, ruin, or loss."

The CyberAdvisor letter is all about preserving from harm, ruin, and loss by acting preemptively to safeguard privacy and increase personal safety and security.

For August 2020, "The AAA Strategy for Privacy and Digital Security."

  1. Authenticate what comes in

  2. Anonymize what goes out

  3. Autonomy from Big Tech 


1. Authenticate First

In the digital age, trust nothing on face value.

Email, websites, WiFi networks, photos, and the 'news'- in many cases, are fake and engineered to manipulate our thoughts and actions.

The act of authenticating is about thinking critically to identify and credentialize your interaction with the internet and digital media.

To avoid being "spoofed" make a habit of first asking:

  • Who is really sending me this email?
  • Is this website what it purports to be?
  • Is that headline meant to inform or influence?
  • Do I trust the WiFi I'm using?

Learn to authenticate all your primary digital feeds, and with a nod to Ronald Reagan: Verify before trusting.

Note - all Private Email domains for our clients include DKIM authentication built-in for every box.

2. Anonymize Your Internet Activities

Encryption is like a silver bullet for privacy and information security because it anonymizes digital activity. This explains certain governments outlawing the possession and use of a VPN.Fortunately, encryption tools are getting better and easier to use. We suggest using a VPN to beginning immediately reducing your digital footprint and to increasingly learn how to use encryption to increase privacy and control your personal information.

We suggest embracing encryption as much as you can in all digital activities by anonymizing internet activity and email across your home networks and personal devices.

3. Autonomy from Big Tech Matters

Do you see what Big Tech is doing as a standard operating practice to feed their business models? Our American democracy has been hacked, and it's time to defund Big Tech and social media by reclaiming rights to personal information and taking control of personal digital domains.

To the mega-billionaire owners of the ruling information industrial complex, you are but a dollar sign at the bottom of their chain. To resist information dysfunction, seek greater digital autonomy and begin the process of making strategic changes, including:

  • Privatize your personal email account
  • Use a VPN everyday
  • Protect you home and office networks and WiFi

Digital autonomy begins with privatizing email and positioning your most vital communication and social channel off the grid of Big Tech's unabated power and abuse.

 

Contact us for more.