Safeguarding against Digital Stalking

Modern life gives us so much facilities and convenience but on the other hand it comes with many disadvantages. One of most sensitive disadvantage of modern days technology is that you can be easily stalk digitally. We leave our digital footprints everyday and in every digital activity.

There are certain steps through which anyone can reduce the risk. No extreme level of settings is needed to maintain privacy but some of the basic steps. This will save you today and in future. Some simple steps like, do not publishing your post to general public.

Through different simple steps anyone can secure himself. But if we go further, we can increase our security and reduce the risk of cyberstalking. While most of the people doing such measurements already to secure themselves. For example, social media accounts reveal a lot of information about any common person. And all those information can be misused. A single username using for all the accounts and apps could find on the web and realizing you one of the old forgotten accounts contain a slightly weak password. Which can be easily cracked and intervein in to your personal life.

This is just an easy example. We bring you a series of checklist through which any one can strengthen his digital defense. While reading this article you will like to use private browsing window also known as incognito browser if you think that your PC might not be safe from any threat.

Digital stalking is not limited to internet world, it can lead towards danger of real worlds.  If you feel that you are at someone’s target list or at any risk. You can implement these tips immediately for your safety.  

Different ways your online activities can be monitored

Setting your profile to Public

While setting your privacy level to public, you are allowing people to view all of your information. There may be different people including scammers and hackers as well. They are seeing your posts, which you post and set the visibility to public. The simple and easy solution to this threat is making your post visible to your friends list only. This will exclude all the people specially “bad people”. We need to give attention while giving our information to companies. We don’t know that which company will leak our information to anyone. So, it is essential to ensure the safety of your information while giving your personal data to anyone.

If one of your friends has the friend list of five thousand people on Facebook and he tag you with one of your posts, you are exposed to at least five thousand people. All those people get free invite to check your personal info on your Facebook account. We can simply change our setting to block anyone to tag us in any irreverent post.

Same User-Name

All of us doing a common mistake while setting the same username for all of our accounts to help us remember it easily. This means that if someone find any of our account username. He discovers our every account username. So, to overcome the risk, one should use different username for different accounts. If it is hard to remember every account details, use any password manager. Password manager will keep tracking of all your accounts details for you.  

Through Your Friends

Friends in real life are some of the close people around. But what about friends or social media? They are all not very known to us. And if we talk about Facebook friends, they are people mostly unfamiliar. Friends on social media can be vulnerable. They are not always very well known although friends are social media share many contents.

To minimize the risk, you can reduce the number of friends, or can filters friends list to trustworthy friends only. Share your content with people who you know better. Make your posts visible to friends only.

Account Infiltration

If you are using weak, shared or leaked password, or you linked your password through any third-party services, which can be compromised then you are at high risk and anybody can reach to your account. For example, if you are accessing different websites with your Facebook account, and someone accidently get access to your Facebook account, then imagine, he may also get access to many of other sites you used.

Reaching your devices Physically

Did you ever check your account, that from how many IP addresses your account was used? This will let you know that from how many IP addresses excluding your own IP address your account is monitored. If you find any suspicious IP address, its risky. Even people around you can access your account from your own device and IP address. And you can’t catch the person who is using your device and IP address.

If you are using a shared PC with anyone, then you should adopt different authentication methods. Use passwords for your smartphones, log out to any and every website your login after completing your work specially on shared devices. You can use different private browser like Incognito window of Chrome. Firefox provide private window while Edge provide InPrivate Window.  It will help you reducing your privacy to yourself. Always deleting your login and search history on public devices and network.

If someone is using your own PC then only private browser will not enough you need to use a VPN for your internet. It will further strengthen your privacy.

Accessing your PC Remotely

People accessing your PC physically will need to reach to your pc without your presence and get to your data. And when people want to reach your PC remotely, they only need permission to access your data. And you will give access while clicking on any malicious link. Such links don’t seem to be suspicious. But if you click it, you will give access of your data and they can do anything with your data without knowing you anything.

Using any good antivirus will help you to prevent from such links. Antivirus scan for virus and malware on your devices. And detect any thing suspicious. If you want to check that who is authorized to access and use your PC. Just go to Chrome Remote Desktop and see your settings. It will help you identify any unauthorized to your device. If someone reach to your PC physically, He can get remotely access of your device from setting. To prevent such things, go to your settings, click on Revoke access to un-recognized accounts and completely turn off the feature. 

Telling People Your Physical Location!

Wait! Why would you tell unknown people your physical location? No, you are not telling anyone directly your actual location. But sharing certain content you are sharing your location to people either knowingly, or not.

Social Media

We are sharing our photos every day on different social media accounts like Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. We tag different locations, check-in points and share our photos with differently landmark. Actually, we are sharing our locations and places to visits with people around. This not only disclose our current locations but also inform others about our next destination.

To sort out this problem, we can reduce our audience by sharing our post to our friends only. Or making our Twitter and Instagram account private. This will help us to reach our post to our friends list only.

Mindful of Sharing

Do not disclose your personal information on social media. Writing your education, workplace or home address and other identity details on your public profile is not a good idea. Along with that keep two factor authentication for log in and using your accounts. This will further secure your device. Try to put your information when its really necessary, and also keep your accounts with general information only.

Remember that, we are providing you general information about digital stalking. If you face any difficulty, or sense any stalking around you, you can directly contact with law enforcing agencies.