Once your information has been taken, you can’t get it back-but you should definitely search your results page for the word password and update the compromised ones everywhere they were used. Have I Been Pwned? is a database of these breaches, searchable by phone number and email address. If you’ve ever filled out an online form or made an account on a website, chances are good that data have been exposed in a hack. If the page allows a login but you’ve forgotten your password, try resetting it if that doesn’t work, or someone else maintains the site, look for a contact page and try emailing the site administrator or customer support. Where possible, update these pages to remove or password-protect information that you don’t want to be public. You may be surprised by what you see when you type your (or your child’s) name into a search engine-a three-year-old wedding registry full of photos and identifying details, a professional website you’d forgotten you made, marathon results with your name and birthday, a public school directory with your kid’s photo. In 2023, it’s impossible to protect yourself from every conceivable threat, so focus on the likely ones. Before you read on, think through how much friction you’re willing to introduce into your life in the name of privacy and security, and think about what you want technology to do for you. It’s a lifestyle, a process, a series of decisions-the particular set of trade-offs (of time, of money, of inconvenience) you are willing to make based on your own circumstances, needs, desires, fears, and resources. It’s not binary: safe or unsafe, exposed or protected. As experts I spoke with repeatedly told me, privacy is not a product. This isn’t just alienating it’s incorrect. “There are things you can do to protect your privacy by 85, 90, 95 percent that will not add much friction to your life.” Much of the discourse about privacy and personal security can be quite extreme, suggesting that if you don’t take certain steps, you’re asking to be hacked that anyone who doesn’t buy X or do Y is an idiot that the only way to live responsibly online is to apply so many restrictions that any benefit new technologies offer is outweighed by all that self-imposed inconvenience. “Not all hope is lost,” William Budington, a senior staff technologist at Electronic Frontier Foundation, told me.
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