Everyday practices to make you safer
We’ve developed a model that allows us, in an intentional and in an organised way, to build strategies and resistance mechanisms that help us:
- Identify our adversaries (in order to)
- Understand the threats (and then)
- (Re)assess our vulnerabilities (so we can)
- Identify our resources and assets (and thus)
- Strengthen our capacities
Risk Assessment
Risk = Threat × Vulnerability / Capacities
Threats are multiple and external to us. Vulnerability is also an external condition that makes us susceptible (both individually and organisationally) to attacks. Vulnerability increases as a result of socio-economic, cultural, and political inequalities. This is why women and marginalised groups are significantly more exposed to violence and risk.
Strengthening our capacities ensures better readiness and more effective responses to the risks we may face.
“We must be able to create our own mechanisms and support networks, losing our fear of power structures, connecting those submarine cables to our cultural cables, outsmarting planned obsolescence, rebuilding computers and our environments, hacking society to extinguish inequality and violence: inhabiting the internet with our languages, beliefs, knowledge, culture, and lives, so that any of us can appear, move, and exist freely and safely.”
Self-Assessment
In this section, we ask ourselves which everyday practices may be putting our digital security and our Digital Rights at risk. The core questions are: How do we define our online risks? What risk factors are we exposed to, and how can we identify them?
Through a series of self-reflection questions, we can recognise unsafe practices:
- Are our passwords alphanumeric (do they include a combination of letters and numbers)? Or do we use passwords like “1234,” our pet’s name, or our birthday?
- Can we identify secure websites? Do we know what an HTTPS certificate is?
- Do we send our passwords through insecure messaging apps like WhatsApp?
- Do we store passwords on a piece of paper on our desk or at home?
- Do we open unsolicited links or attachments, or ones whose origin we don’t know?
- Do we believe the “Nigerian prince” asking for our bank details via an unknown email?
- Do we know what password managers are?
- Do we leave our devices unattended in public spaces?
