All I Want this Holiday Season is Data Privacy | COMMENTARY

“I’m not interesting enough to get hacked.”

“Big tech is already monitoring everything, why should I care about data protection?”

“There’s nothing I can do.”

These are just a few of the things I’ve heard my peers say recently regarding data privacy.

When our parents were young, they could very easily find ways to disappear. They didn’t have to worry about their parents, future employers or companies watching their every move. But for today’s youth, it’s not as easy. Parents can find your location through iMessage or Snapchat. Companies track what you do on their websites to later show you ads encouraging you to purchase their products. Even your bank accounts watch how you spend your money.

written by Kristen Uppercue, Content Manager

All of these things create a digital map of you: the things you like, products you buy, places you go. It’s all designed for companies to make the biggest profit from you, which doesn’t sound so bad, right? But what happens when that information gets into the wrong hands? And do these companies have the right to keep this information? Or potentially sell it?

WVU Reed College of Media Associate Professor and Executive Editor of 100 Days in Appalachia Dana Coester at the Online Security Workshop, hosted by the Student Media Coalition to discuss data security.

To begin diving into the topic and inform media students about their rights to privacy online, the Student Media Coalition hosted an Online Security Workshop earlier this month with Dana Coester, associate professor at the WVU Reed College of Media and executive editor of 100 Days in Appalachia, a digital publication housed at the Media Innovation Center that strives to push back against the national narratives about the region.

As Coester described in the workshop, online privacy has become a luxury and privilege that has to be bought. It can cost hundreds of dollars and endless hours of work to ensure your safety. The cost of protecting your everyday online persona adds up pretty quickly. As Coester said in the workshop, it’s not a matter of whether you will get hacked, but a matter of when. Taking the following measures will better protect yourself online from hackers, trolls and anyone else with malicious intent.

Think of these steps as if you’re locking your car before heading into the grocery store or purchasing an alarm system for your home. Neither option guarantees to keep people from breaking in, but both lessen your chances of a break-in occurring.

1. Purchase a VPN.

If you work on your laptop in public, such as at a university, the library or a local coffee shop, you should consider using a VPN, or virtual private network. VPNs protect your IP address to keep what you are doing online pretty much untraceable. When using a VPN, a private network is created to protect your search history and location.

To learn more about the importance of VPNs and how to choose the one that’s right for you, read this article from Norton.

2. Change passwords regularly and make them difficult.

Short passwords with obvious letters or words, such as your middle name, birthday, etc., make it easier for bots to break through. Having long passwords with random letters (upper and lowercase), numbers and special characters in no particular order will take a bot a little bit longer than the password you currently have (admit it: you’ve probably been using for years any ways).

To learn more about why you should regularly change your passwords, read this article.

3. Vet your social media followers.

Chances are your follower list has a few trolls and bot accounts. Keeping your accounts private will allow you to easily vet who is attempting to follow you. However, if you want to keep your profile public, regularly check your follower list and block the accounts you suspect to be trolls or bots.

There are a few simple ways to spot these accounts, mostly because they do not act human. For example, the accounts will have no posts or likes or will post the same tweet or comment over and over again. These accounts most likely aren’t liking your posts or boosting your engagement, so just block them.

“Be mindful of the ecosystem that you’re in,” Coester said during the workshop.

Learn how to clean out your follower list here.

4. Delete old tweets.

We’ve all seen the effects of cancel culture. It seems like every week a new celebrity is in hot water for old tweets being uncovered. Most people assume this will never happen to them, however, there are people online that will use anything you’ve liked, retweeted or tweeted against you. To keep this from happening, go through your Twitter and Facebook accounts a few times a year and just delete all the old stuff.

This is also a good way to begin preparing yourself for your professional career. “Shift away from Twitter being an entertainment tool and make it a research tool,” Coester said in the workshop. Start following the professionals working in positions you’re interested in and begin transitioning your online presence to how you want to be seen professionally.

Ready to get started? TweetDelete can help delete old posts in bulk and is customizable. View this list for other options.

Want to learn more? WIRED expands on why you should (or shouldn’t) delete old tweets. Read their piece here.

5. Change your privacy settings.

We’ve all done it: you sign up for a new account or download an app and blindly agree to the Terms and Conditions. Who has time to read all of that anyway? Well, the good news is once you agree to the terms, it doesn’t lock you in forever. Head to your social media accounts and go through the privacy settings. Turn off as much as you can.

View Twitter’s privacy information here.

The topic of data security is a very large one that many people study every day. If you’re interested in learning more about data security and online culture, follow me (@KrisUpp), 100 Days in Appalachia (@Appalachia100) and the following reporters and publications:

1. New York Times’ Taylor Lorenz (@TaylorLorenz)

2. New Statesman’s Sarah Manavis (@sarahmanavis)

3. Right Wing Watch’s Jared Holt (@jaredlholt)

4. The Daily Beast’s Will Sommer (@willsommer)

5. The Huffington Post’s Luke O’Brien (@lukeobrien)

6. Data & Society (@datasociety)