User:Princekennyrexyjunior/sandbox

The important first step—something that’s often overlooked—is to figure out what and whom you are worried about. If you are in the middle of a nasty divorce and custody battle, your emails and social media posts could be a lot more sensitive than if everything is going along smoothly in life. And just as life circumstances change, your cybersecurity priorities may change too. Let’s start by considering whom you are afraid of. There are a lot of ways to break this down, but I think there are a few major categories that can effectively guide almost all of your decisions. 1. Criminal hackers: This group, obviously, attacks basically any system they can get access to. They may put a virus or ransomware on your computer, intercept your credit card number, or hijack your social media account to post spam. While their targets are broad, their goal is generally to make money off what they steal. Note that there are other kinds of hackers (kids messing around, snoopers, etc.), but any measures you take against the more dedicated criminal hackers will work for all types. If you are worried about hackers, you want to take measures to lock up your systems and data to make it hard to access and difficult to use if it is accessed.

2. Marketers and legitimate business: There is a perfectly legal market for our personal data. Social media and advertising companies sell access to it. Data brokers sell the information and derive insights. They know all kinds of things about you, from your grocery store purchase histories to your public court records. Some uses of your personal data are benign or even helpful, like helping you find a movie to watch on Netflix. But it can also be used for things like “personalized” pricing, where companies raise prices on items they know you want, or to track your every move. Or maybe you just find it creepy. If you are worried about this group collecting and using information about you, you want to take steps to hide your identity and use platforms that are encrypted and/or ephemeral. The less of your information they can access, the more protected you are.