Uncategorized

We keep this category to temporarily store any articles that don’t quite fit any of our existing categories. If a topic is important enough to write about, it’ll get its own category pretty quickly, so expect regular updates to this page.

Online privacy and security sounds like a fairly specific topic, but it can get very broad, very fast. A seemingly simple question, such as whether every individual has the right to control their own personal data, involves government policy, criminology, technology, philosophy, mathematics (if encryption comes up) and many other fields.

Now that the internet reaches into every corner of our daily lives, online security does the same. We already live in a world where people use the internet to order food, connect with friends, do their jobs, file their taxes and spend their leisure time. That’s to say nothing of formerly innocuous appliances, from cars to game consoles to refrigerators, which now work online.

Every internet-connected activity can pose a risk if you haven’t properly secured your online life. The people who want your passwords, browsing history, location and identity are always looking for new weaknesses — which means we are too.

As the pace of technological development ramps up, new categories of risk will emerge, and we’ll work to keep up. The companies developing the future of the web often don’t have your personal safety in mind when they release new products (here’s a hint: don’t trust Google or Meta with anything personal).

We don’t consider anything too small to write about if it poses a threat to your safety online. Small issues can explode into major exploits if nobody catches them. If there comes a time when hackers learn to steal identities by means of an internet-capable blender, we’ll report on it — even if we don’t happen to have a “Best Blenders For Online Security” page just yet.

Ransomware as a service is a great example of a threat that comes from outside the usual sphere. Hackers have always exchanged information through backchannels, but entire apps for the sole purpose of cybercrime — apps that might remind you of any other software-as-a-service — represents a new trend.

Going afield has led us to some of our favorite article topics (though as our categories expand, you may not find them in this section any longer). We’ve looked deep into the building blocks of encryption, told the difference between anonymity and privacy with the help of superheroes, and helped you understand the risks of biometric data collection.

We also frequently work outside our categories to give you important context. Previous Uncategorized articles have laid out what the Five Eyes, Nine Eyes and Fourteen Eyes networks mean for you, and just what Edward Snowden actually said that got him into so much trouble.

We’ve even covered how to protect yourself from getting scammed while shopping for NFTs (something nobody had heard of just a few years ago). So check out the articles on our Uncategorized page now — you never know what you’ll discover.