How I Stay Safe On The Internet
It's not safe to go alone, take these...
My heart started racing as I saw my phone open my banking apps and start guessing passwords.
I couldn’t figure out what was going on. The phone was acting entirely on it’s own just opening apps and some kind of command prompt looking thing generating text. I tried to disconnect from the internet, but my phone kept fighting against me.
I didn’t give up. Eventually, I was able to turn my phone off. As far as I could tell this stopped the issue.
All my banking apps and cards were connected to my phone, that I was now afraid to use and therefore I couldn’t freeze them.
I went into the office and asked for help from IT security, I was told to reset my phone to factory settings, change all my passwords, cancel all my cards and hope for the best.
Luckily, so far I have not seen any money leave that I wasn’t expecting, except when I have had a lot to drink. Who orders shots after 2am?!
I already had better than average phone security and yet this happened in a sleepy suburb in England. I got lucky that no money was stolen, it could have been much worse.
I have since beefed up my phone security, here’s what I use now, I have no affiliate links, I just like these apps.
DuckDuckGo
DuckDuckGo brand themselves as the privacy search engine/browser, they automatically block as many trackers and cookies as they can, this means you get much less targeted advertising and you are much more hidden from those creeps in Silicon Valley.
They also have a free function to generate you an email address that can block trackers from dodgy spammers online and recently added a password generator, which I can’t comment on as I am already a customer of 1Password (see below).
They also have https as standard on every website they can, which means that someone spying on your computer phone can tell if you are watching YouTube.com but can’t tell that you’re watching videos about cats in fancy pyjamas.
1Password
At time of writing I have somewhere around 200 logins to various websites and apps. I don’t know about you, but I can’t remember anywhere near that many unique passwords and I know from years of internet scare stories to not use the same password everywhere.
1Password allows you to create long, unique and extremely hard to break passwords for every single service you use, it will look something like sdlkjfnaeout023rui0928rj4ir2-3r, which makes it very hard for anyone to guess, including hackers.
Also, as far I as I can find online, 1Password has never been hacked, unlike some of it’s competitors, which means your passwords should be safer with them than anyone else.
NordVPN
A VPN is a Virtual Private Network and it means that when you are online, you sign into your VPN and anyone looking at your internet traffic can only see that you are on NordVPN, not what you’re doing online.
They also makes you safe from public Wi-Fis, as people sharing that Wi-Fi can’t directly access your phone.
I don’t have an affiliate link, but if you email me directly, I can share a code to get us both get up to 3 months free, so reply to this email if that interests you.
Microsoft Authenticator
This is an extra layer of effort when logging into any apps or services that allow it, it’s fucking annoying every time, but it means that someone needs this AND your password to break into your apps. This makes me feel much better each time I have to deal with the stupid popup.
I didn’t have this when my phone got hacked in the intro story to this piece, the IT security guy recommended it and I never looked back.
It has saved me at least once, as I got a ping from Germany asking me if I wanted to sign in to my Email. This means the person probably got my password correct and if they had gotten into my email, could reset just about any password I have access to in the world, so this really saved my bacon.
Modern Phone
I never found out the exact source of the hack on my phone, when I turned it back on the script wasn’t running anymore, nothing appears to have been stolen, I had a VPN, 1Password and was hotspotting Wi-Fi from my phone. I suspected that someone guessed the crappy password on my hotspot, even in that sleepy suburb surrounded by old people, got my eye on you Agnes, stay off my shit!
But, once my phone was restored to factory settings, I was updating to the latest OS version, only to find that my particular phone didn’t update past 2019 (it was 2022), so potentially I was wandering around with a bunch of apps protecting a phone that was essentially a house with it’s backdoor wide open.
So, I immediately got a newer phone with the latest security updates and added an authenticator app.
To Be Continued?
I have not noticed any successful breaches since. There are many more things you can do to protect yourself online, I am told Apple is a better way to go than Android, but just can’t get over the price tag nor hating them so much, maybe one day.
Jack’s Picks This Week
How Spooked Should We Be by AI Ghost Stories?
A friend in the AI space sent me this, I absolutely fucking hate Loab and hope she’s not realThe Genius Fallacy
Made me feel much better about not having found my “thing” yetGood Work: Reclaiming Your Inner Ambition
, a really interesting approach to finding work that brings us joy and meaning, not just money
I really enjoyed this book by