EFF YEAH, PRIVACY!

With the various winter holidays come lots of gifts, and with lots of gifts come lots of privacy concerns. Have no fear, though! There are ways to shore up your defenses, so to speak.

Our Pals at Mozilla have issued their second annual *privacy not included guide to the season’s more popular tech-centric gifts, with categories such as ‘Can it spy on me?’ and ‘Can I control it?’ to help folks figure out the privacy particulars of their devices.

First course of action when you get a fancy pants new tech toy is to pay attention to all those permissions it’s going to ask you the fist time you fire it up. Are you really going to be using that new thing for phone call? If the answer is ‘No, literally no one actually calls anyone anymore’ then don’t say yes if it asks for access to your contacts. Take those permission requests one at a time and actually think about if it’s necessary.

Settings, settings, settings  After your thing is all set up and dazzling you with its bells and whistles, take the time to do a deep dive through the settings. Default settings will be skewed to the manufacturer’s preference, not yours. Do a bit of Googling and figure what you can change, and how.

Happy Holidays, and if all else fails just take the batteries out and use your device as an expensive paperweight.