To be seen or not to be seen: from SnapChat to Jeff Bezos' picture

When you share intimacy picture with someone, there is always a risk that the someone you share with may do something to hurt you later, intentionally or unintentionally. From revenge for breakup to blackmail the world's wealthiest man, it could happen to anyone, really, anyone, including Jeff Bezos, the man with pocket of 150 billion dollars and one of the most influential newspaper.

If Jeff Bezos doesn't have a way to protect his picture with his 150 billion dollars, there is probably no way, right? It would be true a few days ago. Since APF Cyber Privacy Guard is released, the answer is now "Yes we can".

APF Cyber Privacy Guard is different from any other products today. Its protection is permanent and follows the file around forever. The protection doesn't go away when you upload the file to cloud; the protection doesn't go away when someone download the file from the cloud; the protection doesn't go away when you send the file to someone; the protection doesn't go away when that someone forward the file to another someone, and so on. Can your protection solution do that? I bet not.

Protection by APF Cyber Privacy means the content of the file, in the case of Jeff Bezos, picture of part of his body, can only be seen by whoever he gave permission to, again, in the case of Jeff Bezos, his girl friend. When his girl friend's brother get hold of the picture, he won't be able to even see what the picture is about as long as he is not on Jeff's list, and I bet he would never be.  Can your protection solution do that? I bet not.

If Jeff finally decided that the picture is really not a good idea, Cyber Privacy Guard will delete the content forever, I really mean forever, no matter who may still has the file.  Can your protection solution do that? I bet not.

The best of all, Jeff could have protect his privacy for free, just sign up at https://www.apftechnology.com/cpguard/consumer_index.html. Now you can do something outsmart Jeff Bezos, the world wealthiest man, sign up with Cyber Privacy Guard and protect your information.

Jeff, if you saw this post, buy us before National Enquirer does, cause they will not be happy that with more people uses Cyber privacy guard, the less chance they can get their hands on the pictures.

Protect your privacy in the era of Google

Google is in nearly every part of our digital life, on one side providing valuable services like internet search, email and cloud storage as well as Android, on the other, it collects every bit of data possible about our life, dissecting it and sell it to the companies and politicians who in turn profit from it by  manipulating people into believing what they get is what they want, essentially make people  psychological succumb to whatever the companies sales.

The trend is accelerating with more data available and more computing power to use with the advancement of AI and Machine learning. It is the time that we should stand up and say enough is enough, and start protecting our privacy in cyber space.

Here are a few thing to stop Google to collect your personal data

1. Delete and disable search history
2. Disable Ads Personalization. This stops Google to link activities to your google account
3. Disable location on your Android phone, only active it when you need it like for driving direction
4. Use alternative search engine. Duckduckgo is one that doesn't track you so far

If you want more privacy like I do, further you can with APF Privacy Guard

1. Encrypt files before store on Google drive, including photos and videos. 
2. Instead of writing into email, write personal information into a file and encrypt it, then share the encrypted file as email attachment

Protect you and your family's privacy before it is too late. 

Protect your PC beyond anti-virus

For most people, Windows Defender is good enough for the purpose of stopping virus. Is anti virus enough to protect your computer and information on it since that is the ultimate goal? the answer is NO.

Standard anti-virus like Windows defender or others for consumers is capable of stopped a small friction of the threads your computer is facing every minutes you connect it to the Internet. Malware like ransom virus through phishing and public WiFi at McDonald's or Starbucks, or the fake public WiFi that was setup for the purpose of injecting Malware into your computer, has become more common than virus attached the the email.

The best protection is to have all the security tools that help but not solely depends on those tools knowing all of them has limitations. A few best practices for everyone

1. Never click on unknown link on the soliciting email, always use bookmark to go to your banks or sites you do business with to get to the site.
2. Encrypt information on your computers, not the whole disk encryption but file level encryption, so when you lost them, you can just shrug off. Try to find encryption software that supports long password. Normal password is easy to crack which defeats the purpose of encryption
3. Back up. You need at least 2 copies of back up, one on cloud and one on external drives. Remember to encrypt the back up too. In the worst scenario, recover the OS and restore from back up.

Or you can use APF Cyber Privacy to take care of the encryption part. 

Cyber privacy Podcast

Talks about cyber privacy, cyber security and how to fight back with APF Cyber privacy guard

Proactive Protection, a new direction of cyber security

Proactive protection is what we at APF Technologies  believe in and what we provides. We firmly believe it is, and will be,  the future direction of the cyber security. It means to encrypt the information at all time so even when you loss those files to hacking, misuse, or just accidentally misplaced, no information is at risk.

So far much of the effort to secure security has been building defensive line through firewalls, anti-virus, as well as early detection and remediation effort like SIMS. All those are absolutely necessary and effective for most of the time, but when it fails, the damage is done. The indictment in DNC hacking cases is good reminder of just how valuable the security system can be when a good old fashion email phishing could easily defeat all the sophisticated security measures that was in place.

But why hasn’t proactive protection like encryption at rest been adapted widely? It is, at least up to now, difficult to balance security and productivity as well as the complexity of the key management system. Encryption requires a good key management system in place so encrypted files can be shared and accessed, and that is, or was, the missing pieces.

APF's Cyber Privacy and Information Protection and Access Control solution is a disturbing technology that enable Encryption at Rest 2.0. It ensures every file you have are encrypted and stay encrypted anywhere anytime. In the worst scenario where the system is hacked and files are being stolen, and you can still say nothing is lost. Won’t that feel great?

Be worried in the AI Era

I am very much worried.

Not that it will replace jobs any time soon, current AI is not advanced yet, and when it is there, hopefully it will be a productivity gainer than job killer, nor the the world be ruled by it.

However I do worry about lost privacy thanks to the relentless effort by the tech giants who have access to vast amount personal data. Cambridge Analytics is one example that are being exposed, while there are many others are doing the same every day, just to see how many venture investment has been poured into this area.

I can’t predict what and how much the damage can be done by the AI in this regards. Probably exaggerated, but Cambridge Analytics, not a significant player in the technological area, promised that they could manipulated the voters with the data they already have, most from Facebook. To me that is scary enough to re-exam my use of social media and cloud storage. I am sure with more experimental and more iteration, the Deception skills will only get better, as long as we the people continue to feed the data voluntarily.

EU’s GDPR is on the right direction but just no enough because it won’t stop or even slow the outflow of personal information as most people don’t realize that someone else is able to tell them what to buy and who to vote for, and it is their own action empower the trend.