1. Get Smart
“At one point I thought changing my name might help with privacy, but that was before the Internet.”
—OLIVIA WILDE
Social media, online dating, photo sharing, mobile apps, and more can make a modern girl’s social life a dream—or a nightmare. When you just want to feel connected to friends, family, and romance, the last things you want to deal with are potential dangers like identity theft, online stalking, corporate information sharing, or revenge porn. For many women, getting control of their online privacy is confusing, overwhelming, and stressful.
This book is packed with some serious self-defense moves. It’s designed to help you get organized so you can navigate the chaotic landscape of online privacy. In these pages you’ll find a guide to making sure you don’t share too much. You’ll learn how to look good to potential employers (or potential dates) and safeguard your privacy from sleazy marketers, unethical megacorporations, scammers, stalkers, bullshit artists, and anyone who wants to silence women online. And it does all this without making you feel judged, paranoid, or like a total newbie.
Traditionally, women haven’t been taught to stand up for themselves the way men have—whether online or anyplace else—but this is changing. Today, women are standing up to stalkers and being more careful than ever with personal information. We’re getting fierce, angry, and strategic. We don’t have time for shame, and the haters are losing. These are significant signs of much-needed changes in women’s roles, especially in our role as consumers.
One of the major obstacles we face in protecting ourselves is that most social media websites are not designed to safeguard people who are targets. While there are a lot of amazing female programmers and powerful women working in the security and technology sectors, most sites and social sharing apps are designed by men who don’t take into account that half the users will experience particular kinds of predatory behavior. Thus, the rules and structures of these online tools permit them to be used for evil.
In addition, the tech industry is full of corporate greed and douchebags and a whole lot of bad security practices. Most online services, such as bill-paying websites, and mobile apps are made shoddily and leak private information like there’s no tomorrow. It’s enough to make you wonder why every person you know hasn’t had their identity stolen yet.
Privacy can be something you want just to feel safe, or you may have read horror stories about things happening to other women (maybe even your friends) and want to make sure that those things never happen to you. Maybe you’re interested in being downright badass about your privacy because you’ve had a bad experience—or maybe you’re dealing with a privacy or reputation crisis right now.
No matter what brought you to these pages, this book will give you control and power over something that would otherwise have the power to hurt you and the people you love. And if you’re reading this because you’ve lost control, there’s good news: you’re about to get your power back.
In the first two chapters, you’ll find a lot of suggestions that will help you define what you want to keep private and what you’re okay with sharing. Be prepared to take a few missteps as you get started—there will be a bit of a learning curve—but know that I’ll give you the basics to keep what matters, like your home address, from getting into the wrong hands. Once you nail down your boundaries, determine who puts you at risk and what the risks are, and identify the bad guys, your life will feel more like an adventure from a place of freedom and power than a disaster waiting to happen.
Speaking of disasters, it’s not just provocative or racy photos that can get stolen and ridiculed (or worse) to hurt you online. You don’t need to be a flirt to get singled out. For someone who decides to target you, your presence is enough—if you don’t protect yourself. When you protect yourself, however, you actually can post or share sexy pictures of yourself and stay in control. The key is knowing what to protect, knowing what sites and apps you can (and can’t) trust, and removing from view anything that can compromise you.
You can start taking control of your private information right now. Find out what information is out there about you by searching for yourself. Searching for yourself might be daunting, even scary, and it might bring up negative feelings, but this is where you start getting tough on controlling your private property. Knowing is always better—and safer—than not knowing.
TAKE THE ONLINE PRIVACY TEST
The first step to taking control is a privacy check-up. Follow these instructions now, and don’t panic if you find something online you didn’t expect:
• Google your name using quotation marks, like “Anna Jones” (and be sure to check the Images tab).
• Google your phone number.
• Google your home address.
• Google your Social Security number (tax ID).
• Do a Google reverse image search of your most-recently shared photos.
• Search your own name on Spokeo, USSearch, or Intelius.
Don’t blame yourself for what companies like Facebook, LinkedIn, Google, online advertising companies, and data brokers have done to your privacy. And don’t panic if you see something you didn’t realize was public: what’s online doesn’t have to stay visible forever. Along with how to prevent a privacy disaster, this book will show you how to fix some of the worst things you’ll find about yourself online.
EIGHT PRIVACY TIPS TO USE RIGHT NOW
Every three months, do a privacy check-up that includes searching for your name, phone number, and address, as well as online accounts such as Facebook, Twitter, Google, and your bank. But you can take some actions immediately to make yourself safer online and, hopefully, improve what you see in those check-ups.
1. Use different email addresses for different online accounts. You can set them up to forward email to the address you actually check.
2. View your Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+ profiles as someone else, and then adjust the privacy settings.
3. Tape over your webcam.
4. Activate the password lock on your phone, laptop, and tablet.
5. Never sign in on someone else’s phone, computer, or tablet.
6. Look into getting a free, Internet-based VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) phone number to use for any online communications. Don’t worry—you can forward it.
7. Consider getting a post office box that you can use in place of your home address to minimize the risk of identity theft, stalking, and other dangers.
8. Install two or three antitracking plug-ins and extensions in your browser, such as AdBlock Plus, Disconnect, Abine’s Blur, or Ghostery.
If you want to be extra vigilant or if you have known enemies online, you can also set up a Google Custom Alert at http://google.com/alerts/. When you do, you’ll get an email notification whenever your name, email address, or phone number is added to Google’s searched sites. Note that Google Alerts sends you only the newly indexed results for your search since the last time it checked, not every result there is. You can set up as many alerts as you like, and enter multiple words for each search. Try to use specific search terms so you don’t end up with frustratingly general results. To search for an exact phrase, put quotes around your words (like “Anna Jones”), and finish up by selecting the areas you want Google to cover (News, Blogs, and so on) and how often you want the results delivered. Once you’re done, bookmark the Google Alerts page so you can go back and manage your Alerts or edit them to work better for you.
TARGETS AND NONTARGETS
Google’s Eric Schmidt said, “If you have something you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.”* Actor and tech investor Ashton Kutcher and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg have each said that if you’re not doing anything “wrong,” then you don’t have anything to worry about when it comes to losing your privacy. That’s easy—and profitable—for them to say. They make money on getting you to give up as many details about your life as they can grab.
Why, exactly, does Ashton Kutcher get to decide that whatever you’re doing is wrong just because you don’t want the whole world to know about it? Filthy-rich celebrities are more able than the rest of us to hide things they consider private or embarrassing because they can afford to. Wanting to keep something private doesn’t mean you did anything wrong, and you shouldn’t feel ashamed for protecting your privacy. These people are trafficking in beliefs from a bygone era, like laughably antiquated notions about female hysteria and women having to choose between a job and a family.
The most important problem with modern privacy discussions is that we aren’t addressing the critical difference between how men and women perceive privacy—most men aren’t targets, but most women are. When the agenda of privacy discussions is set by men like Schmidt, Kutcher, and Zuckerberg, they sound completely crazy and disconnected from reality. They don’t understand what we experience every day as targets. This lack of understanding manifests in these decision-makers’ attitudes about privacy and safety, as well as decisions about user experience design and implementation that put those who bear target status—namely, women—at even greater risk than those who don’t.
If you’ve never gone online as a guy, try it. Use a male name next time you make a throwaway account on Reddit or other social media sites. Being male online will blow your mind. You’ll never fully appreciate what it’s like not to be targeted and just how differently you will be treated by groups, businesses, and other individuals until you spend time online as a man.
As women, we’re targeted just because we show up. Every time we go on Facebook or leave a comment with a female name attached to it, we’re checked out for sex, we’re judged accordingly, and the nontargets act on their judgment. Nonetheless, many young women aren’t even aware that they bear target status.
Most guys don’t think about what it’s like to be sized up for sexual value as the first thing anyone sees about them, everywhere they go—anytime they go online, walk into a room, or try to join a conversation. Most men don’t have to deal with being a target their whole lives the same way that women do—including people who are female gendered, female-bodied, and all along the spectrum of gender expression.
Men also feel more comfortable drawing attention to themselves when they feel targeted than women do. Guys are often louder when they’ve been targeted, whereas women have become trained to be lone soldiers online, knowing that to send up a signal flare for help is more likely to attract enemies than allies.
The privacy settings at social media sites and apps have a baseline of normal that doesn’t consider the fact that half of their users are being targeted. The situation sucks, because in fact we have a lot of male allies out there. This book and the many conversations women are having about these issues are raising the profile of target status. Soon, ignorance will be no defense.
This book is for women of all ages, and I’d be remiss not to say that it’s also for women of all shades on the gender identity spectrum and that people of all genders and orientations are warmly welcomed here. Females aren’t the only ones who bear target status. Women attack and stalk, too, and LGBTQ people are routinely left out of the privacy conversation—or worse, ignored altogether.
LOSING YOUR PRIVACY
Some people might try to tell you that by being online, sharing photos, or having a public presence on the Internet, you’re somehow “asking for it.” Don’t fall for this. Just because a girl wears a skirt, is she “asking for” sexual assault? Of course not. People make these arguments when you’re not giving them what they want—and what they want is something private from you. When you refuse to give these people what they want by standing your ground about something private, they often get mean and angry. The idea that consumers somehow deserve to be violated because we want to live our lives on our own terms is a hurtful myth that’s used to make us feel ashamed so we won’t stand up for ourselves.
Privacy is your right. Assuming you’re not an ax murderer, it’s up to you to decide what you want to keep private, and whatever you want to keep private is worth protecting. Don’t let anyone—no matter how important, famous, or powerful—make you feel ashamed about standing up for your boundaries. Only those who have proven that they’ll treat your personal stuff responsibly should get access to it, and the only one who can truly protect your privacy is you.
When you lose your privacy, personal things are shared with strangers that
• are embarrassing;
• are hurtful;
• put you in danger;
• may cause you to lose things you care about or need, like money, child custody, or employment;
• may cause you to lose your job or get kicked out of school (or hurt your chances of getting a job, and so on);
• ruin your reputation;
• are used to tell lies about you;
• expose the privacy of people you care about (such as your family members), putting them at risk; and
• make it easy for criminals to steal your identity.
The loss of your private information can affect your family, employment, education, relationships, credit, online memories, mental and emotional health, friends, and reputation. Having your private information fall into the hands of stalkers, data brokers, competitors, exes, anyone who is mad at you, people who think it’s fun to hurt random strangers, and companies that profit from selling information to advertisers or other shoppers can ruin your life.
Ways You Can Lose Your Privacy
You can lose your privacy in a number of ways, and most of the time, it’s not your fault. Often, your privacy gets violated because no one warned you about what to look out for or who not to trust. The ways your privacy gets screwed with—privacy threats—fall into four categories.
PEOPLE WITH GOOD INTENTIONS
• Friends sharing your location, like with check-ins
• People taking photos or video of you without your permission
• Someone accidentally (or intentionally) seeing your computer, phone, or tablet screen while you log in, sign up for something, make a purchase, or open an application such as iPhoto
• Someone sharing personal or sexual photos (or videos) without your consent
• Hackers or creeps spying through your webcams
• Someone making embarrassing information public or sending private details about you to people like your boss
• Malicious people publishing your private information (like your address) online
GREEDY, DOUCHEY COMPANIES
• Websites changing settings and making private things public
• Websites tricking you into entering personal information
• Companies like online stores, Google, Facebook and other social media sites, email services, and others selling your personal information to other companies (like their advertisers or third-party affiliates)
• People-finder services buying and collecting your private information and making it available for purchase
OOPS . . . ACCIDENTS
• Not realizing that something you put online is public
• Not knowing which things to avoid sharing online
• Not using a password on your phone, laptop, certain apps, or file folders
• Unclear website privacy settings causing you to make private things public
PROTECT YOURSELF RIGHT NOW
With so many ways your privacy can be compromised, it can seem like being safe is at odds with having a life online—especially if you intend to be at all sexy or sexual. But you don’t have to live a boring, antisocial life to be safe. You can protect yourself.
Some people feel like they can’t do anything online without putting themselves at risk. But being online and using social media, different apps, photo-sharing websites, or even dating sites can be as safe as you want it to be. When you get in a car, you put on your seat belt. When you get on a motorcycle, you put on a helmet. When you get on the Internet, it’s as safe as you make it. Here are some things to do right now.
Tape Over Your Webcam
Everything has a camera. Your phone, your laptop, your tablet, your Kindle. If you have a modern device that can get online, it probably has a camera. And if it has a camera, someone looking for cash or scummy thrills has figured out how to hack into it and turn it on without triggering the on light. No joke. That’s why you need to put a piece of tape over your webcam, even when it’s off or if you never use it.
A year before Cassidy Wolf was crowned Miss Teen USA 2013, a guy in her high school used a program to hack into the webcam on her computer and take photos of her. She found out when he got into her social media accounts and tried to extort money from her. It turns out that she was one of 12 girls he had taken photos of and threatened for cash. You can bet he shared the photos; there are forums where guys who run these cam scams post photos they collect. Don’t believe me? Google “ex-girlfriend pictures” or type it into any torrent search engine.
You can make your camera worthless for spying—but still usable when you choose—by keeping it taped up. Sticky notes work well because they have a gentle adhesive and are easy to replace. You can also find privacy stickers for purchase online that are made specifically for putting on (and taking off) web and phone cameras.
Cassidy Wolf ’s malicious hacker used a program that turned on cameras without activating the light or doing anything to let the girls know they were being spied on. In fact, this happens more often than it gets reported in the news.
There’s a huge black market for compromised webcams and the video or photos they can record, and unsurprisingly, cams belonging to girls and the images that can be stolen from them are worth the most amount of money. Such programs are typically put on a computer when the victim clicks a link, often through an email, and they infect the computer with a program that hides while letting the computer’s camera be controlled remotely. This is just one form of an online hack attack called phishing. (Learn more about phishing, how to spot it, and how to avoid becoming a phishing victim in Chapter 5, “Identity Theft.”)
After her harrowing experience, Ms. Wolf now tapes over all of her webcams, changes her passwords, never uses someone else’s computer or phone, and never reveals personal details to strangers or “friends” she just met. That’s what you should be doing, too.
Lock Your Phone, Computer, and Tablet
Put a password or personal identification number (PIN) on your computer, tablet, and phone. There’s a Creepy Steve in every café, on every bus, in your friend circle, and among your family’s friends. If Creepy Steve sits down at your computer or picks up your phone, iPad, or Kindle when you go pee, and you didn’t lock it, he’s got access to any account you left open. This can include email, messaging and chat, social media, photographs, personal files, Internet history, and even bank accounts.
It’s even scarier when your device has been stolen, because the attacker has all the time in the world (or at least until you notice the theft) to rummage through your accounts. (If you hate passwords and PINs annoy you and slow everything down, don’t miss Chapter 10, “I Hate Passwords.”)
Do a Privacy Check-Up
Make a list of your online accounts and apps and set aside one hour to double-check your privacy settings. If it sounds as fun as doing household chores, that’s because it is. Unfortunately, sites like Facebook like to screw with your privacy settings, so chances are good that if you haven’t checked your settings in the past few months, you might be revealing something you will regret.
You’ll worry less about the privacy bait and switch these sites like to play on users after you read Chapter 6, “How to Share.” For now, just bite the bullet, do a privacy check-up, and reward yourself afterward because you’re worth it. You’ll feel 1,000 percent better when it’s done, I promise.
Don’t Email Your ID
Never scan or photograph your ID and send it to anyone online—even to Google or Facebook. No one should be asking for your ID, and you’re not legally required to show it. Companies that ask are treading a thin line, and you have no way of knowing if the information you share is really, definitely safe. ID information could hand an identity thief the keys to your entire life. (When you read about identity theft and how to avoid or fix it in Chapter 5, you’ll see why you shouldn’t send your ID via email, text, or any other unsecured way online.)
Many people-finder websites (also called “people search” or “people lookup” services) require that you scan and provide your ID in order to opt out of them selling your information. They even have onerous procedures such as accepting opt-out request letters only via fax or postal mail. This seems to be standard practice. To stay safe, never scan and send your ID to anyone without blacking out your photo and ID number. Find out more in Chapter 7, “People-Search Websites.”
Use a Password Manager and Install an Antitheft App
Don’t ever let your computer or your browser save (or “remember”) your passwords. Use a password manager like 1Password, LastPass, KeePass, or any of the recommendations in the Resources section.
Along with a password manager, install an antitheft app like Prey or Lookout. You can download these apps to your computer or phone, giving you the power to track your devices if they get stolen or used by someone else.
Antitheft apps can camouflage themselves as games and lock and remotely wipe your devices. They can show you where your device is on a map, take photos from the device’s camera, and upload those photos to your online account. You’ll be able to see not only where your laptop or phone is but also who has it, and you can give this information to the police. These apps all do things a little differently, but the general idea is the same.
BE THE FIREWALL
Remember that you decide what information about yourself to reveal and when, why, and to whom. Social tech empowers you to run your own social life, but it can just as easily put you in the crosshairs of stalkers and criminals. Sometimes it feels like protecting your privacy is a full-time job, with more-than-occasional midnight and weekend shifts for good measure.
This book changes all of that. In the following chapters, you’ll find answers to help you conquer every privacy puzzle, including how to have revenge porn taken down, remove your information from people-search sites, survive having your identity stolen, date safely, conquer the insanity of social media privacy, and much more.
The best part is that you don’t have to give up doing anything you like. Don’t worry if you can’t do every single thing in this book. Even taking just four actions from the “Eight Privacy Tips to Use Right Now” on page 4 will tip the privacy scales in your favor.
From now on, you’re going to stay a step or two ahead of anyone who wants to steal from you, mess with your life, or silence you online. All you have to do is what you’re already doing—you’re just going to do it a little smarter.