The NSA’s collection of personal information, including email logs and photos stored online, through its internal government computer system, PRISM, deals a huge blow to internet privacy as we know it. In addition, the possibility that the companies themselves (which include huge technological giants as Google, Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft) aided in the government’s information gathering further raises the question of whether your personal files on the internet and cloud are truly secure.
To secure your files on the internet and cloud and wipe out any chance of privacy invasion, you have to secure your information from unauthorized access. But how can you do this?
Let’s take, for example, a sensitive file you happen to store in Dropbox, such as a tax-related document, password document, bank account document, price list, or even your personal diary. Just storing it in Dropbox without any kind of protection would be unwise in this day and age. The least you should do is encrypt the file. Even better, make sure the file is encrypted with persistent file security. This ensures that you can control who can access the content and what they can do with it.
Now no one but you and the people you share with can access this file. Even if the internet companies were to share this file with the government (or anyone else for that matter), they wouldn’t be able to access it and your privacy would remain intact.
The lesson to learn from this event is clear. To protect yourself against privacy intrusions like PRISM, you need to always encrypt your sensitive files or photos before you put them in the cloud server or send them through email because you never know who would want to get access to them. Most importantly: YOU need to have control over your files. It’s always better to be safe than sorry when your privacy is at stake.
