Dear Lifehacker, I’m no idiot when it comes to security, and you guys have often mentioned how easily Wi-Fi networks can be cracked or how anyone can sniff out passwords and cookies. My question, though: How dangerous is it really when I’m sitting and checking my email at the cafe on the corner?
Whatever you use private browsing for, sometimes you want to start your secret browsing from the page you’re already on. “Incognito This” moves your current page to a new incognito window, so you can continue browsing privately without starting from scratch.
Dear Lifehacker,
I’ve been downloading torrents for a long time and people keep telling me about how great Usenet is, but is it actually safer than BitTorrent downloads? Or is it just not as popular?
Sincerely,
Searching Bins
I am an extremely private person. I don’t broadcast my location, I use privacy tools to keep advertisers from tracking me, and I almost never give any app access to Facebook. Of course, a lot of people don’t have a problem with living publicly. I’ve always wondered what the benefits and downfalls of doing so are, so I decided to give it a three-week test run. Here’s how it went.
Dear Lifehacker, I’ve read a number of articles recently about encryption and keeping my personal data safe. I can see the need for protecting financial information, but what other info do I really need to be concerned about? Things like my photo album, music collection and video library (which by far take up the majority of my hard disk space) don’t seem like the things that need to be encrypted so much as just backed up — so full disk encryption seems a bit like overkill. Right?
iOS: Private browsing isn’t too difficult on a desktop computer, but keeping your web travels anonymous on an iPhone is a bit more difficult. If you want to hide your every move, Onion Browser is an app that uses Tor proxy servers to hide your activities from ISPs, other Wi-FI connections and more.
Earlier in the week we showed you how to clean up your Facebook app permissions, and it’s worth doing the same for Twitter. Plenty of apps and services may have their hooks into your Twitter account, and if you no longer use them, it’s time to lose them. Here’s how.
Privacy is dead, right? Facebook knows everything about you, Google does too, and the world is still turning. Whether you don’t mind companies or the government knowing all about your private life or still feel completely uneasy at the idea, we often gloss over exactly why your personal data is worth protecting. We chatted with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) to get to the heart of the issue, and dispel some common myths around the ways your data is used.
In our cleaning routines, it’s easy to forget one of the most important spots: your Facebook apps and their permissions. Now is as good a time as any to take a peek and make sure all of the apps that have permissions to your Facebook account are apps you actually use, and not just apps that you used once a few years ago and forgot about.
In the past few years, VPN services have hit the big time — especially among BitTorrent users. These days more and more internet users see running a privacy enhancing service as a requirement rather than just a luxury. They’re not always perfect, though. Here are a few tips and tricks that can enhance the security of any VPN.
