Online Infosec Basics

You are the commodity! You’ve probably heard the saying “there is no such thing as a free lunch” well this truer than ever now. Your online personal Infosec is just as important as it is in your in person interactions and passive situations.

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With only a few exceptions if a product, or service is free to you this means that the organization putting it out is working on an alternative business model. They are not getting money from their product users so you have to ask where they are getting their money from.

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This usually means they are harvesting info from you. This can be addresses, name, phone number or any other personal info. How big a threat to your personal infosec will depend on where on the scale these companies and organizations fall.

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On the low end of the scale they are asking for an email to send you a news letter where they will up sell you on paid content or that companies products. This’s is where most small businesses and entrepreneurs is operating including ourselves. They won’t sell your info, they are just trying to conduct their own businesses. The main threat in these instances are data leaks and hacks of either their own systems or any third party service they use to conduct their business.

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On the other end you have organizations that will take any and all info they get and sell it. The more info they require the more likely this is the case. This info is likely then, not only used by them but sold to people search sites and other services. This is by larger organizations because they are getting a volume of info that people search sites are willing to pay for. Now not all companies do this and this does happen at everywhere on the spectrum. Do your due diligence and ask your self is what I’m getting worth it if they sell my info.

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Now luckily the way to protect your self from both data leaks/breaches and the company them selves selling the information is the same. It’s called one time use information.

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This is most easily done with emails as there are multiple services that offer one time use forwarding address. This allows you to create an email address that you will use for only one website or organization that forwards any email sent to it to your actual email address. By doing this you are able to protect your actual email address and if your one time address gets sold, leaked or hacked you are able to shut it off and stop receiving any spam you might be getting and if the information is hacked or leaked, it doesn’t matter because that email is only used for that site and doesn’t connect to any of your other accounts.

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This tactic should be used for any newsletter, website, or organization you sign up for or give your information out to. That being said never use these services for anything that involves sensitive information. These services will be able to see any email that is sent to

you so it should not be used for financial, medical, or anything else you consider sensitive. For these instances you should just create a dedicated email for those purposes. We recommend proton mail for a email provider you can find them HERE.

You can either set up a separate account or you can set up a paid account and have multiple addresses that feed into one inbox.