Tuesday Sweep: 12 September 2017
Your weekly reminder to back up your data, update software and otherwise pay attention to your digital environment. (Oh, and to go to the CRASH Space meeting…)
Jump in Here
- Welcome. If you haven’t been following along, it’s okay. You’re not behind, you’re just where you are.
- I highly recommend the coach tool at the Crash Override Network has a great step by step break down for many of the same introductory steps we did here.
- Feeling more ambitious? Review the list of OneThing articles and pick one to catch up on.
Sweep
The basics.
- Updated software recently? Pick a new device to check on today.
- Backups still up and running? When was the last time you made a clean disk image? Here’s a new great article on how to design a backup system.
- App and Password Gardening: Delete a low quality app from your phone or delete an account that you don’t need that doesn’t make you happy. Digital cruft builds up. Delete it. If you’re keeping it, can you move the password to your password manager (delete it from everywhere else) and add two factor authentication?
- Move to offline archive & delete your histories where you can find them.
- Double check privacy settings on your phone, social media accounts. The folks running the companies can change the TOS and add “features” before you notice them.
Learn
Where do you scan for news
Let’s focus on the Equifax breach today:
- WHAT TO DO: As per the very good instructions via the New York Times – FREEZE YOUR CREDIT before the 30 days of free freezing is over. although the PIN numbers are dodgy. This is way more important than signing up for the extremely sketchy, actually an attempt to limit class action lawsuits, credit-card required monitoring service that Equifax is offering. Some good DIY credit monitoring is probably sufficient anyway?
- WHAT TO DO: Once you have been the victim of identity theft, you can change your Social Security Number
- WHAT TO DO 2: Maybe consider suing? DoNotPay lets you create the paperwork to sue in small claims court. (via BoingBoing)
- LEARN: Like many others, this industry has never given a damn about the people it keeps records on. We are not the customers.
- John Oliver on credit scores and the damage they can do (2016)
- The Atlantic reported on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau calling credit reports a fraud (Jan 2017)
- Also from the Atlantic how ‘Data Brokers’ sell very very private data with zero oversight. (2013)
- Nice op-ed on how Equifax had ONE JOB.
- LEARN: There are many interesting links from University of Denver Strum College of Law’s Privacy Foundation has put together a very good list of links for further reading.
- LEARN: What’s the deal with these terrible, insecure SSN’s becoming so central? A nice little video from a few months ago by CGP Grey and a 2015 article by 538, and 2012 on The Verge covering the similar information.
- Hunh, maybe I’ll get a Discover Card. They trawl the internet for their’s customers SSN‘s and warns them.
- CALL:
- Call your congress people and tell them you want privacy laws to protect your data!
- You want limits on what is collected, and how long it can be kept
- Strong limits on what can be sold or shared between companies
- Regulations on the physical and virtual security of where and how it can be stored, including best practices on limiting what employees can get access.
- Tough rules, like Europe’s, on disclosure of data breaches.
- Call your state reps and ask them what can be done on a state level to do the same! Encourage them to put pressure on California Attorney General Xavier Becerra to come down hard on the credit bureaus. The CAG has already had good result against Target.
- Call your congress people and tell them you want privacy laws to protect your data!
On a what I’d rather be doing with my day note:
- Thematic with the day: This really amazing video from Strange Parts on the process of adding a headphone jack to an iPhone 7 via todbot
- Also more fun than freezing credit? Securing a RaspberryPi
Reflect
Feeling dumb or stupid about how not-l33t you are? Angsting over some silly thing you “know better than to do.” Stop. That isn’t useful. Regret is only of use if it prompts an actual change in behavior. Maybe it’s NOT you that sucks. Could be it’s the technology and you could come up with a fix that would help lots of people. Look forward and make a plan.
Engage
We are a community. You are a welcome part of it.
