Get familiar not only with scams, but with in-built harvesting of your data

Modern communication devices have brought tremendous advantages to the consumer but can create serious problems when privacy is compromised, advises Diarmaid Condon.

Privacy, does it really exist anymore? Certainly, true privacy doesn’t. If you walk down the street of a town, own a credit or debit card, send an email or carry a phone you are leaving very traceable trails everywhere you go and building up a database of information that is of value to others.

Online Privacy

When we interact with computers or smartphones we expect we’ve most likely compromised our privacy, but probably don’t realise exactly how much. As you browse your way through the web, software tracks and stores your every move, saving the information to supply-targeted adverts based on your profile. This is before you ever get to post something about your activities.

Posting online is incredibly easy and, having grown up with the technology, younger generations can be somewhat fuzzy on the potential consequences. Facebook profiles are used when hiring and firing employees and this snooping is becoming increasingly common. Likewise, pictures and videos meant for private consumption regularly show up publicly online — so if you don’t like that information is publicly available about you — it is nigh on impossible to remove it. And we also now have a generation that finds much of their life documented online in one way or another.

Angela Madden, managing director of Rits Information Security Specialists says: “The best rule of thumb is to treat the internet as one big postcard that anyone can access and read. If you put information about yourself, or anyone else online, then expect it be read — so think before you post.”

As someone once said: “Don’t put it online unless you’re prepared for your mother to read it.” .Search for your name online — it can throw up some surprises and it may make you change your posting habits.

Your privacy is potentially imperilled when you give your information to virtually anybody. It is ultimately entered into a database somewhere and you are entirely reliant on that individual or organisation protecting that information at all costs —which often doesn’t happen to nearly the standard you would wish.

“Technology alone will not prevent data loss, it is important how the technology is implemented and configured,” says Madden. Indeed, much of the time when systems are breached it is due to human error.

“User awareness plays a significant part in the overall process. It is vital that organisations provide clear guidelines to their employees on data protection and how to prevent data from being lost, either accidentally or maliciously,” says Madden.

In the past year alone businesses such as Ebay, Home Depot, Morgan Chase, Target and AOL have all had their systems seriously compromised and there are many others.

Government organisations such as the ECB, Florida and Washington Court systems have also been breached. You’ve got to wonder that if organisations of this magnitude can have their systems cracked, what hope have you got when handing your details to a small local business, an online store, a large corporation or a government department?

Offline Privacy

When you go online you expect that you’ve left a ‘digital footprint’, but what about while you’re just going about your everyday business? You’d be surprised how difficult it is not to leave a trail that tells anybody with the ability to access the information where you’ve been and what you’ve been doing.

For a start, most of us never actually go offline as we carry a tracking device in the form of a mobile phone.

If somebody had brought in legislation in the 1970’s stating everybody in the country would be obliged to carry such a device there would have been an uproar.

Nowadays, your phone tracks your every move — even when it’s turned off. Phones can be traced by GPS signals from satellites or from a signal emitted to check for available mobile networks. In any case, many of us use Social Networking apps to tell everybody exactly where we are, what we are doing, along with when, where and with whom we are doing it — a boon to burglars worldwide.

There are CCTV cameras somewhere on virtually every street. It is estimated that the average city dweller is caught on camera up to 300 times a day. The term ‘closed circuit’ is somewhat ironic as the systems were originally meant to be self-contained and not accessible publicly.

Many are now networked, therefore accessible from anywhere with the right access details. A Russian website even streams camera feeds, many of them set up inside homes, which have been accessed because network passwords were never changed from default.

Transactions also leave a trail. When you use your credit or debit card you are tied to a particular place and time. Many ATM machines now also have cameras to deter thieves, so you can’t even claim somebody else was using your card.

Big Brother

Samsung gave a new meaning to the phrase ‘I hear you’ with the announcement last year that its Smart TVs are storing your conversations on a third-party database. Mobile voice recognition, such as Siri on the iPhone, does something similar.

Big Brother (from George Orwell’s novel 1984) appears to loom large. As we interact more and more with technology such invasion of privacy will become more the norm.

Transcripts of conversations, texts and triangulation of mobile phone signals used in court, show just how easily your details and activities can be traced and used. You never know when that phone in your pocket may help clear or indict you in terms of where you were at any particular point in time.

Data Protection

At a time when vast quantities of data are stored on every individual, it is important that someone monitors how the data is stored and used, the job falls to the office of the Data Protection Commissioner.

You have rights to see information stored relating to you — for instance your credit rating which is used by financial institutions to see if you are credit worthy. A visit to the Irish Credit Bureau ( www.icb.ie ) and payment of €6 will give you access to the information.

If you wish to find out more about how to access information available about you then visit www.dataprotection.ie

Under Section 3 of the Data Protection Acts, you have a right to find out, free of charge, if a person, an individual or an organisation, holds information about you. You also have a right to be given a description of the information and to be told the purpose(s) for holding your information.

Identity Theft

Identity theft is on the rise. It is a huge industry with an estimated 7% of all US citizens falling victim to the crime in 2013 — 64% of incidents relate to credit card fraud.

“Social Engineering attacks such as ‘phishing’ emails (seeking to access your login and password details) are a growing threat in Ireland, resulting in financial loss to an unwitting recipient,” says Madden.

If in doubt, don’t click on email links, visit your accounts by web browser as you would do normally and protect your credit card details jealously.

Trend Micro Gives Students A Chance To Have Their Say About STAYING SAFE ONLINE Pictured a the launch of the 'What's Your Story?' competition for Safer Internet Day, Avril Ronan, Senior Operations Manager and Internet Safety

Threat protection

Trend Micro, is an online security firm based on the Model Farm Road, in Cork and Avril Ronan is its global programme manager for internet safety.

She says young people have a lot to say about privacy and this information will help others going online for the first time.

The company runs the ‘What’s Your Story?’ video and poster competition in which students submit their own self-made videos. The theme is: “Share something you’ve learned that will help someone going online for the first time.”

The competition runs until April 21 with over €7,000 in cash for the winners. It is open to individuals and primary and secondary schools. Further details at www.trendmicro.ie/whatsyourstory

The winning videos will be used for the company’s ‘Be Smart’ programme, delivered by Transition Year students in schools around the country.

“Its ultimate goal is to empower youth and promote success online for everyone,” says Ronan.

“Programmes educating on privacy issues need to not scare people and require ongoing conversations and communications within families in particular.” she says.

“We approach it by explaining how things you do online can affect your reputation for the rest of your life. Kids get it, they pick these things up a lot quicker than adults,” she says.

What’s the Crack?

If you had never heard of ‘hacking’ the News of the World scandal sorted that out. The term normally infers illegally gaining access to websites, databases, phones, etc.

It is more correctly termed ‘cracking’ which is the hacking of the programming world and is merely code modification to improve it or use it for purposes for which it wasn’t originally designed.

Good hackers are very much in demand. Cracking has more sinister connotations, and generally refers to gaining illegal access to digitally stored and protected information of some description.

Good crackers are also in demand, sometimes not for the right reasons. Many, however, are gainfully employed assessing threats to, and weaknesses of, systems holding sensitive or valuable information for banks and government organisations for instance.

If you doubt the size of the industry that is involved in illegally accessing sensitive information, look at the phenomenal amount of illicit activity across worldwide networks online on the Norse website at http://bit.ly/1jMRnQB . There are thousands every hour of every day.

Protect Yourself

Fully protecting your information is virtually impossible. At some stage you’ll have to entrust others with it, and they can often be found wanting. There are, however, some elements of your privacy that you do control.

* Don’t want your photos shared? Then don’t post on social networking sites – that’s simply what you do. Step out of photos if you don’t want to be ‘tagged’ as your image will become searchable. ‘Phone Free’ events are now becoming popular — people are starting to get it.

* Don’t tell burglars you’re leaving home. Some suggest posting ‘Sitting at the bottom of the stairs with my shotgun’ as your Facebook status. It’s probably wiser to either not post or post as if all is normal. Don’t leave accounts with open access.

* Emails are inherently unsafe unless they are encrypted (not just the password) and most aren’t. We should all ask why someone with the insider knowledge of Hillary Clinton would wish to control access to her personal communications.

* Phones are not secure, most have a recording facility of some description, as Anglo Irish Bank and the Gardaí found out to their cost. If someone tells you they may be ‘recording your phone call for training purposes’, take it that they are doing so.

Presume that virtually everybody is recording your calls because many people do. Smartphone apps make it very easy and it is perfectly legal to do so. It is not legal to send the recording to a third party without permission, but for your own use it is fine.

* If you’ve got information stored on a PC, laptop, tablet or phone that you’d rather didn’t make it to the public domain, then encrypt the device. Password protection is generally not enough, as it’s fairly easy for someone with a bit of knowhow to circumvent them.

* Don’t use any form of communication or recording when under the influence. Some feel that should include talking. It definitely includes the ‘sexy video’ in the boudoir – it’s really unpleasant when they show up online after the breakup.

* Hold your hand over the keypad when you enter your passcode at an ATM, it is how a lot of ‘skimmers’ pick up your card details. Finally, don’t let anybody take your card out of the room unless you’re attached to it — again, skimmers’ paradise.

Can you truly lock down your phone?

In short, not without making it useless. You’ve got to shut it down and take out the battery, other than that it is constantly sending information on your whereabouts to your mobile operator via transmission cells it accesses to keep you connected.

You can, consequently, get apps that will track your phone and, if necessary, delete all data on it should it ever be lost or stolen. Highly recommended if you have sensitive data on your device.

Changing privacy settings

Apart from tracking your every move, your device in itself doesn’t threaten your privacy. It is the apps you install that are the true privacy invaders, just note how much of your phone they tell you they will access when setting them up.

Apps such as Facebook, Twitter, What’s App, Skype, Viber, etc, all have privacy settings you can change.

It is certainly highly recommended that you limit who can see your profile and read posts in any social networking or communication app. How you access this information varies from device to device, but is generally accessed through Settings>App Settings, or something similar.

What is syncing?

If you read any of the transcript of the Graham Dwyer case you’ll be aware that much evidence was gleaned from information ‘synced’ from phone to PC. Syncing is short for synchronising and it does what it says on the tin.

Programs store information on the device on which you are normally logged into, automatically, then upload the information to the ‘cloud’ (large servers set up to store data transmitted while online).

When you log in with the same account details on your PC, laptop or tablet, the uploaded information such as pictures, documents, etc, is then also available on that device. There are now myriad such services like Apple’s iCloud, Google’s Drive, Microsoft’s SkyDrive, Drop Box and many others.

Power of the algorithm

An algorithm is quite simply a set of steps set up to accomplish a task. The term has become synonymous with computer science because all computers use mathematical algorithms to achieve everything they do: Input data — series of complex calculations — output answer.

In terms of privacy and security algorithms are also very important. The amount of generated data is astronomical. IBM estimates that 2.5 billion gigabytes were created every day in 2012.

Much of that is what is termed ‘unstructured data’, ie text and media files that are not stored in a structured manner in a database. For anybody to sift through this information to find anything is virtually impossible — without the aid of algorithms designed to spot trends in data.

This is why algorithms are such a key tool, particularly for security analysis, where there may be a search for one tiny bit of information out of terabyte streams of data passing through a system.

Edward Snowden

No feature on privacy would be complete without mention of the CIA systems administrator who provided the press with top-secret National Security Agency documents leading to revelations about government surveillance on phone and internet communications.

The documents he provided revealed numerous global surveillance programs run by governments in conjunction with telecommunication companies.

The revelations fuelled debate over the balance between national security and information privacy and the constitutionality of governments accessing such data. Snowden, who was given asylum in Russia, is considered a criminal in the US and certain European countries.

The case also gave fuel to Big Brother conspiracy theorists who feel governments and large corporations are monitoring our every move.