Marin CyberSafe News: New Year, New Privacy Settings

In This Issue:

• • Protect Your Accounts 

• • Reduce Your Attack Surface 

• • Tweak Your Privacy Settings 

• • Don’t Let Your Photos Betray You 

• • Additional Resources 

From the desk of Jason Balderama, CISO, County of Marin

While January 28, 2022 marks the 15th annual Data Privacy Day, each of us faces privacy concerns on a daily basis. If our private information becomes public, it can affect our credit ratings, employment options, and even our safety.

In this month’s cybersecurity tips newsletter, we’ll focus on steps you can take to maintain privacy on social media. If you are one of the lucky few who can live your life unplugged from Facebook, TikTok, and the like, you’re in the clear. If you find yourself among the majority of us who either want or need to engage with others via social media, then here are some tips and tricks to stay safe and secure.

Protect Your Accounts

Social media accounts are under constant attack by cybercriminals. Your account can give a scammer a good way to infect your friends with messages that come from a trusted source: You.

Here are a few simple steps you can take that will thwart most attacks.

• Use long, unique passphrases for each of your accounts. If you use the same password everywhere and one of your accounts is compromised through a data breach or malicious attack, the attacker will gain access to all your accounts. Use a passphrase with multiple words that is easy to remember and tougher to crack.
• Use Multi-factor Authentication (MFA). MFA, sometimes called two-factor authentication (2FA) or advanced authentication, makes it almost impossible for someone else to log in to your account, even if they have your password. You trade the minor inconvenience of entering a one-time code for the huge benefit of keeping the baddies out of your stuff. Turn this on everywhere you can!
• Update Everything. Yes, everything. Keep your operating systems and software current on your computers, phones, tables, and other Internet-connected devices. Turn on automatic updates and reboot when prompted. Keep in mind, networks are usually not compromised because of brand new, 0-day vulnerabilities. Instead, they are breached because a patch was never installed for a bug that was fixed months or even years prior.

Reduce Your Attack Surface

Your attack surface is the sum of all the ways your information can be compromised. Every account with your personal data or app with a security flaw adds to it.

Here are some ways you can reduce your potential vulnerability.

• Delete online accounts you no longer use and uninstall apps you no longer need so they can’t be used against you. With fewer things to manage and update, you can focus on protecting what is actually important.
• Search for yourself online every now and again to see what others will find when they look for you. Once you upload a picture or write an angry tweet, you lose control of it, and anyone who took a screenshot can continue to spread it long after you press the delete button.
• Opt-out of any websites that share your personal details. Invest some time to ensure that a would-be attacker will be frustrated and move on to easier prey.

Tweak Your Privacy Settings

All major services offer privacy settings to limit what you share publicly. It may take a bit of exploration to find them, but you can use these tools to control your exposure.

• Review your settings.  Pay special attention to location settings, permissions for facial recognition, who can tag you, and who can see your posts. Also, check the details you publish such as your hometown, birthday, family members, and where you work. Consider removing all of them.
• Protect your identity.  If it’s allowed by the service you use, you can go a step further by not using real information, such as your full name or actual date of birth.
• Check who can find you.  Don’t forget to check who can find you by your phone number and remember to change your vanity name or username so it won’t give you away.

Disclaimer

The information provided in Marin CyberSafe News is intended to increase people’s awareness of cybersecurity and to help them behave in a more secure manner. Links in this newsletter are provided because they have information that may be useful. The County of Marin does not warrant the accuracy of any information contained in the links and neither endorses nor intends to promote the advertising of the resources listed herein. The opinions and statements contained in such resources are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the opinions of County of Marin.

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