Data Privacy and you!

I would love to start teaching classes on Data Privacy and the rise of scam calls at MakeICT, but I wanted to get community input on what courses to teach! Take this quick survey to help me out!

https://www.accybersecurity.com/class-survey

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Isn’t one of the first rules of cyber security to never follow random links in forum messages?

And another rule to not provide information, especially email address, on any web site that doesn’t disclose at least a privacy policy?

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First rule of cyber security is don’t talk about cyber security.

I break that one all the time. :rofl::rofl::rofl:

As for the privacy policy it is important to have but impractical to rely on for any protection as they can be changed with minimal/no notice and depending on the hosting country they can be impossible to enforce. It is more important to rely on your instincts that you presented. If you don’t trust the site don’t put the info - sign up for a class if you want and wait and see if I am trustworthy or not.

I will have a policy in place tomorrow as I thought the hosting service would auto-link that for me. Thanks for the heads up!

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Freshly minted privacy policy

Privacy Policy — Air Capital Cyber Security LLC
(Privacy Policy — Air Capital Cyber Security LLC)

@mikeb good looking out.

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I was lucky to be blessed with a computer teacher in middle school who took internet safety very seriously and taught us how to identify sketchy links. (He taught us how to pirate safely since he knew we were going to try it anyways XD) I imagine this class would be something similar? If you were just skeptical of every link out there rather than learning to differentiate between safe and unsafe links as well as taking other security measures, you may as well not enjoy the luxury of the internet at all.

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Correct! If we wanted to do a class on internet safety, I would prefer to do a deeper dive than “Don’t click links.” People need to have some level of trust in the internet, or nothing will get done. I would provide you with more information on how to verify who you are working with instead of ruining the internet :smiley:

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Identifying sketchy links has become more difficult since then. Among other things because of Unicode look-alike characters and because of paid ads that can be outside of the web content creators direct control (syndication advertising). Links on legitimate web sites like news.google.com are generally redirecting after hitting Google’s referral collection methods.

A public forum like talk.makeict.org doesn’t do any verification so one should be more careful about links here.

Obviously there’s much more to internet safety, but it’s a very common thing to provide something less than fully safe as a prelude to corporate security audits to drive a point home. I’ve done exactly that when I was an Internet Security professional.

Pointing out that there’s a potential for “do as I say, except trust me” is always a valid warning.

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If you guys saw how much data is tracked with your cell phone, I think you would realize data privacy is a lost cause.

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Jesse, I have seen how much data is tracked on your phone. That is why I want to discuss data privacy. There are things that can be done about it and all hope isn’t lost. We can stem the tide!

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Even so, harm reduction is also important. Even if you can reduce your chances of getting hacked or scammed by 50%, 30%, or just 10% its still better than nothing.

You also can’t guarantee 100% safety driving on the road. But you still take measures to be as safe as possible (I hope). Just like teaching a teen how to pump their brakes when driving on ice, you can teach someone how to turn on their firewall while browsing.

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Just letting everyone know that I am closing the survey at the end of the day! It has been exciting to see the results and a few of the classes are neck and neck so make sure your voice is heard!

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