Your Selfies Are Insecure. Here’s How to Encrypt Them:
For some, texting is like talking. It’s an intimate way to have a conversation. But how intimate is it, exactly, when you count up all the participants: yourself, your phone, your data carrier, the person on the other end of the line, their phone, their data carrier, the corporations who run the servers that move your messages to and fro. And probably a government or two. It’s more like a party line.
The social networking giants promise secure backchannels, but that’s not always the case. Even if your ex isn’t reading your Facebook messages, Facebook might be. The company was sued in 2014 for allegations of data mining personal messages in order to serve more precise ads. Last year, Google announced it’s going to start mining your inbox activity to better target its ads to you and your network of friends.
Standard SMS isn’t secure, and while many of the most popular messaging apps use end-to-end encryption, they can still leave you exposed. It’s time to look for a mobile messaging solution that’s more secure, grants more privacy, and gives you a place where you can talk more freely.
Source: Wired
The worst thing about having a phone or laptop stolen isn’t necessarily the loss of the physical object itself, though there’s no question that that part sucks. It’s the amount of damage control you have to do afterward. Calling your phone company to get SIMs deactivated, changing all of your account passwords, and maybe even canceling credit cards are all good ideas, and they’re just the tip of the iceberg.
Using strong PINs or passwords and various Find My Phone features is a good place to start if you’d like to limit the amount of cleanup you need to do, but in this day and age it’s a good idea to encrypt your device’s local storage if at all possible.
Source: Ars Technica