Cleaning your reputation
10-13-2022, 03:38 AM(This post was last modified: 10-13-2022, 03:45 AM by Free-based Expat.
Edit Reason: edit added add'l info
)
Online-based OPSEC:
-Stop using your phone, don't use phone apps; almost anything that can be done on your phone can be done on your computer; or in a virtualized phone environment
-De-couple yourself from using Google, Youtube, Facebook, Instagram accounts (they sell data to third parties to track and monetize your internet persona); if you must use one of these services do it on your computer with a VPN, with bogus contact details and a virtual number, not your real number
-Stop adding to your internet presence; perhaps counter-intuitively, some content on the internet starts to disappear after a while
-Use burner emails to create internet/ services accounts, and don't fall into the trap of using your real name for one of these accounts; which could be reverse email searched
-If you're going to use a linkedin, partially redact your last name and use a nickname, middle name, etc for the first name, lock down the privacy settings; this goes for any accounts that could be publicly visible. Utilize the max privacy setting, even though they're of no assurance that your info will be protected.
-Make every effort to not have your personal photos plastered on the internet; again, they can be reverse searched
-Protip: Most people, 90 percent of the time, look at the first ten google results, with a heavy bias towards the first three. If there were hypothetically something undesirable about you in first three results, that would be the real problem, and it would behoove you to use a reputation management service, or some other method to get different results placed higher.
-VPNs are a great method for online privacy, you can use multiple VPNs even if you are more privacy-conscious.
-Privacy based chat apps are a great resource but they often demand that you share your address book and a phone number. If you're going to use one of these apps be cognizant of that, and get a cheap second phone that doesn't have any stored contacts.
In the US at least employers and other have access to social media info, credit info, address details, among others, of basically everyone as a part of pre-employment background screen. The tech/ scraping of web data has gotten much more pernicious in recent years, including being able to find out past job details/ salary, internet accounts, leasing data, car ownership, and much worse. If you post ish on the web, it can and will be scraped by big data.... They will find out what they want about you, but if you are more paranoid about internet security, at least they won't find out about what internet accounts you use to post, or use for social media. Again, it's crucial to not be tied back to your personal email or phone number, and this is the trap most people fall into.
-Stop using your phone, don't use phone apps; almost anything that can be done on your phone can be done on your computer; or in a virtualized phone environment
-De-couple yourself from using Google, Youtube, Facebook, Instagram accounts (they sell data to third parties to track and monetize your internet persona); if you must use one of these services do it on your computer with a VPN, with bogus contact details and a virtual number, not your real number
-Stop adding to your internet presence; perhaps counter-intuitively, some content on the internet starts to disappear after a while
-Use burner emails to create internet/ services accounts, and don't fall into the trap of using your real name for one of these accounts; which could be reverse email searched
-If you're going to use a linkedin, partially redact your last name and use a nickname, middle name, etc for the first name, lock down the privacy settings; this goes for any accounts that could be publicly visible. Utilize the max privacy setting, even though they're of no assurance that your info will be protected.
-Make every effort to not have your personal photos plastered on the internet; again, they can be reverse searched
-Protip: Most people, 90 percent of the time, look at the first ten google results, with a heavy bias towards the first three. If there were hypothetically something undesirable about you in first three results, that would be the real problem, and it would behoove you to use a reputation management service, or some other method to get different results placed higher.
-VPNs are a great method for online privacy, you can use multiple VPNs even if you are more privacy-conscious.
-Privacy based chat apps are a great resource but they often demand that you share your address book and a phone number. If you're going to use one of these apps be cognizant of that, and get a cheap second phone that doesn't have any stored contacts.
In the US at least employers and other have access to social media info, credit info, address details, among others, of basically everyone as a part of pre-employment background screen. The tech/ scraping of web data has gotten much more pernicious in recent years, including being able to find out past job details/ salary, internet accounts, leasing data, car ownership, and much worse. If you post ish on the web, it can and will be scraped by big data.... They will find out what they want about you, but if you are more paranoid about internet security, at least they won't find out about what internet accounts you use to post, or use for social media. Again, it's crucial to not be tied back to your personal email or phone number, and this is the trap most people fall into.