Never stop improving your online privacy and security

I'm no privacy expert, but over the past several years, I've made a series of small changes that have compounded into a life with less tracked online behavior and far fewer spammy calls and weird moments where social media knows I'm thinking about a new camping tent.

It started with subscribing to DeleteMe, a service that submits opt-out requests to the data brokers selling your personal information to anyone willing to pay for it. The global data broker market is currently valued at roughly $300 billion. They continuously repopulate your data from loyalty cards, app tracking and public records and new brokers pop up

every day, so it’s never a “one and done” deletion request.

For California residents, you are about to get a big upgrade: State Sen. Josh Becker's Delete Act takes effect this summer with DROP, where the first mandatory broker deletions begin on Aug. 1. DROP will be a single tool through which you can request removal from all registered data brokers at once.

Next, we locked our family's cellphone eSIMs to prevent SIM swapping, which is when bad actors get your carrier to reassign your phone number to a device they control, which gives them every SMS authentication code sent to your number. And from there, they have access to whatever accounts you use SMS authentication for. The FBI logged nearly a thousand SIM swap complaints in 2024, with $48.7 million in reported losses. Most victims report the downstream fraud rather than the mechanism, so the actual number is higher. Locking your SIM takes just a few minutes with your cellular carrier.

The next stage in my privacy journey was moving from SMS to authenticator apps for two-factor authentication wherever we could. The FBI and the National Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency issued a public advisory heading into 2025 urging Americans to stop using text messages for two-factor authentication. The catalyst here was Salt Typhoon, a Chinese state-sponsored operation that had been living inside AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile and Lumen, giving attackers access to unencrypted SMS messages including the authentication codes protecting your bank account and email.

When it comes to online tracking and browsers, my husband switched away from Google’s search engine a few years ago. He first tried DuckDuckGo, and now is using Brave, which has its own built-in search, blocks ads and third-party trackers by default, and has reached 101 million monthly active users. The data collected from your browsing gives private companies a constantly updated picture of your preferences, what you’re thinking about right now, and which products to show you ads for.

After an unexpected detour I had in Facebook jail a few months ago forced an accidental audit of my account's connected apps, I spent an afternoon revoking access for dozens of services I hadn't used in years, then did the same for Google including blurring our home on Google Maps.

Last year, security researchers found that attackers were purchasing defunct startup domains and using “Sign in with Google” to access former employees' accounts on Slack, Notion, Zoom and HR systems through OAuth tokens no one revoked.

As for AI tools, I use Claude Code in Terminal instead of chatGPT or Claude’s web or app products, which keeps all my context and memory stored locally where it can’t be unintentionally erased. A friend had their Anthropic cloud account closed without explanation and lost everything including her chat history, her custom instructions, all of

it. When your context lives on your machine, that will never happen. For readers using AI chat tools, remember to opt out of letting AI companies use your chats for training data.

None of this required any real technical expertise, but each change plays an important role in securing your accounts, identity and privacy online. Pick one thing at a time, and spend 30 minutes making that one part of your digital life more secure. It’s a journey that never ends as the tools used and bad actor practices keep evolving, so get started today.