Enabling Encryption and Harden Your Setting to Protect Your Privacy.
Securing your data on device and on transit between the network.
This is fourth part of the series How to stay/safe secure in digital life.
Before getting started, let’s first understand what is Encryption and why it matters for you privacy and security.
Encryption is a technique in Computer World that is used for making your data ( SMS, Photos, files, etc. ) secure so that your or to whom is given access can only see that. How does this even happen, Let me explain it -> When you encrypted your data ( it can be in any form ) using an encryption algorithm (some kind magic/technique), it converts your data into random character ( in some kind of mysterious form) and it can only reverse/ decrypt by using the Encryption key / Password that you have access.
And you don’t need to worry about all these technical terms, you just have to remember that one key/password using which you perform encryption.
By now you must have understood how encryption happens, but you will be thinking, why you should care about that? And the best example is that ( let’s assume you lost your phone somewhere or a thief stole it from you, if you have enabled encryption on your device thief can access data without the PIN or a password using which you have enabled encryption on your device).
I’ll walk you through how you can enable encryption on Mobile and Computer and what are other tools/techniques you should be considering for hardening ENCRYPTION on your data so that no one can peek in.
- Enabling encryption on Mobile ( Android )
Setting -> Security -> Press ‘Encryption’ option
Setting may be vary for phone to phone, you can look in the search in setting search bar and find it out.
- Enabling encryption on Computer( Window)
Control Panel -> System and Security -> BitLocker Drive Encryption -> [ select the drive ] -> Turn on BitLocker -> Enter the Password [ Easy to remember(for yourself) but hard to guess ( for other)]
Using Bitlocker you can Encrypt your external storage(HDD).
By performing above technique you can encrypt your data on devices but what about the data that transmit over network i.e., your login credentials (ID/email, password) when you login in any website. You can also protect that information using encryption technique like (using https, VPN).
https — ‘s’ in https stand for Secure and by that mean sites that have enabled https are encrypting the data before sending over the network/internet, again no need to worry about the terms, you have to just take care of one thing and that is only use website that has enable https and you can identify them by the this 🔒.
You can use httpseverywhere extension ( available on both chrome and firefox ), it forces to use https version of the website if available.
VPN stands for virtual private network and what is does, it creates a tunnel through which your data flows( off course encrypted) even before reaching to ISP ( Internet Provider) and then data goes to destination without noticing and the destination or your website sees your data as coming from VPN server and it’s location (you can choose any country in the world) not from your exact location and your computer. Out there are plenty of VPN so before choosing any of them please do research and then select. And to make it easy for you here are few websites…
💡Tips :
- Minimize the data collection of Google. Link
- Always choose the VPN that doesn’t store the logs of your activity.
- Use Orbot on mobile device, for more detail click on the below link (it’s free).
Thanks for reading. If you find this helpful please give a 👏🏿 and share this with your loved ones.
In case of any query you can reach me at: 59r@protonmail.com
