ArticlesAn archive of Privacy Parent’s original content designed to help increase your privacy literacy.
An archive of Privacy Parent’s original content designed to help increase your privacy literacy.
February 26th, 2020
They’re tracking you. Right now. Everywhere you go, your movements and your online purchases and meanderings are likely being recorded and stored in the cloud. Big Tech is watching. Think you’ve slipped their gaze by turned off location-based services for Facebook or other main apps or websites? It’s not as simple as that. They’re tracking you. Here’s the lowdown on tracking and some tips to reduce your exposure.
Retailers Are Building a Digital…... Continue reading >
January 28th, 2020
If you’re new to password managers, an introduction is in order. A password manager is an application that you use to automatically generate unique passwords for each of your accounts. You provide security for all of these passwords by entering a single master password into the privacy manager itself.
Why are password managers useful? Think of all the apps, online stores, banks, social media accounts you regularly use. There are a lot, right? Each…... Continue reading >
December 16th, 2019
It’s time to start thinking of products like Roku as two-way devices that provide services in exchange for information. Switch on your Roku Ultra and it’s watching you and your family watch it. Understanding the privacy agreements from entertainment services like Roku can help you better understand the technology and enhance your family’s private security.
What Is Roku?
Roku makes devices and services that allow you to watch internet content…... Continue reading >
December 2nd, 2019
If you don’t like the notion of faceless companies gathering information about you and your children for the benefit of their advertising strategies, you can opt out of their tracking efforts. Your data is yours. It isn’t always easy to do, but if digital privacy concerns you, opting out is an important step.
As a recent report from the Washington Post put it, “data brokers are building profiles about you, using…... Continue reading >
October 30th, 2019
There’s almost always a semi-secret way to sneak into a website’s off-limits areas, and very often, your kids know about it before you do. This goes for age-restricted content on YouTube, too.
Elsewhere on this site, we’ve covered the use of VPNs to breach firewalls and masking apps that disguise the programs a smartphone is running. Here’s another deceptive—and surprisingly simple—trick parents ought to know about: adding the letters NSFW to…... Continue reading >
October 23rd, 2019
While schools across the country have implemented privacy and security restrictions to Internet access, students have discovered they can use a VPN to circumvent their school’s security measures and break through firewalls. (They’ve learned other tricks, too.)
The VPN works to create an encrypted tunnel between a device and the Internet. Once you connect through this encrypted tunnel, your online traffic becomes indecipherable. In layman’s terms, this means that when your…... Continue reading >
October 16th, 2019
Kids are always one step ahead of their parents when it comes to technology, and they’ve come up with some clever ways—like the secret calculator—to disguise their online activity. For instance, they’re using apps to mask what they’re doing. Some of these apps are so effective, most parents are completely fooled by what they see when they look at their kids’ phones. A trained eye, though, might notice that something’s amiss.
Swapping apps
... Continue reading >
September 25th, 2019
YouTube doesn’t have a popularity problem—just about everyone everywhere uses it. But it has had problems controlling what videos find their way to the site and who sees them. Your kids have the same access to the videos on YouTube you have. Whether those videos are appropriate for children is immaterial, and that is a problem. YouTube Kids is the company’s solution.
Elsagate
YouTube has literally millions of videos coming…... Continue reading >
September 11th, 2019
Sometimes you don’t want anyone to know what you’re looking at on the Internet. No need to justify or defend that position; you just want to be anonymous. That’s what the private browsing, or incognito mode, on your browser is for, right?
Private is not Anonymous
Browsing in a “private” setting will block cookies, prevent any web addresses from auto-filling your address bar and keep no record of your history….... Continue reading >
August 27th, 2019
Money can’t buy you love, but it can buy you friends. Likes, comments, followers and friends are all for sale on the Internet. Want 5,000 “real Instagram likes” on a recent post? That’ll be $28, please. Need to increase your reach on Twitter by adding 10,000 followers? Then the “Premium Package” is for you. It’s $80 and, the vendor vows, “100% safe.”
Why would anyone pay to increase their friends-and-followers tally? What would be…... Continue reading >