It's impossible not to be charmed by Sheila Hancock singing Coming Down from Aldermaston, a merrily satirical 1962 protest song that feels perfectly of its time. Back then, Hancock was starring in the riotous BBC comedy The Rag Trade and was only too happy to lend her popularity and her voice to the pacifist cause.

Now 80, Hancock has refined her protest strategy somewhat. These days she is quite a technophile and has signed up to several campaign sites. "It's not quite the same as doing the Aldermaston march or being dragged off in Grosvenor Square," she says. "The campaigner in me worries slightly that pressing a button is too easy. It's not so committed. But they have to take notice when millions of people are doing this – look at the Arab spring – and injustice can be revealed to ordinary people." She believes Edward Snowden's exposés about state snooping should be inspiring their own Aldermaston-style protests. "I'm shocked by it in terms of world importance. We have a right to our own lives. The big questions we are asking now are very disturbing, but the press is our greatest saviour at the moment."

Like many internet users, Hancock has become increasingly concerned about protecting her privacy online. "I grew up in a generation where we kept things private, where a letter was a lovely little very private thing that arrived," she says. "Suddenly we can send messages that could misfire, that anybody can see. My grandchildren have a completely different attitude to privacy, but I feel I have to assume that everybody can see what I'm doing on the web."

Spot on, says security expert Bruce Schneier, who has worked with the Guardian on the Snowden stories and seen hundreds of the leaked documents. "If the NSA wants in to your computer, it's in. Period," he says.

Yet there are things you can do to make it harder. "The NSA has turned the fabric of the internet into a vast surveillance platform, but they are not magical. They're limited by the same economic realities as the rest of us, and our best defence is to make surveillance of us as expensive as possible," he says.

Schneier uses tools such as GPG, Silent Circle, Tails, OTR, TrueCrypt, BleachBit – and others he won't name – and has introduced what he calls an "air gap": "Since I started working with the Snowden documents, I bought a new computer that has never been connected to the internet. To transfer a file, I encrypt it on the secure computer and walk over to my internet computer, carrying a USB stick. To decrypt something, I reverse the process. This isn't bulletproof, but it's pretty good."

But to most web users, unfamiliar with encryption algorithms and open-source code, these precautions will seem extreme. For more practical solutions, the Guardian asked security consultant Rik Ferguson and our own security supremo Dave Boxall for suggestions, and put Hancock, musicians Will.i.am and Scroobius Pip, author Margaret Atwood and psychotherapist Philippa Perry through a sort of privacy health check. Here's what they suggest to deter both state spies and ordinary fraudsters:

• Passwords: don't use the same one repeatedly. Create a complex one with upper- and lower-case letters, numbers and characters such as $%&!. Perhaps use the initial letter of each word in a sentence to help you remember it. Differentiate it for each application by introducing letters from the site name, for instance. Or use a management app such as LastPass or DirectPass.

• Security or password reset questions: this is one of the easiest ways to hack an account. If you are asked to provide answers to "security questions", consider whether the answers are really secure – ie that you are the only person who can knows. If you can create your own questions, do. If you are obliged to answer standard questions such as "first school" or "first pet" remember the answer doesn't have to be true, it only has to be something you can remember.

• Social media: take advantage of security features on Facebook and Twitter such as two-factor authentication and notification of log-in attempts from unknown devices. Don't share too much. For example, don't mention your "porn star name" (name of first pet plus mother's maiden name), which is exactly the kind of information needed to reset email and bank accounts.

• Email: all free email and webmail services (such as Hotmail and Gmail) are vulnerable, so to communicate privately buy a service such as Fastmail that is not based in the US. At the very least, install two-step verification on Gmail.

• Search engines: try a smaller one, such as DuckDuckGo, to avoid tracking of search history.

• Smartphones: these are particularly exposed, so be aware that no messages are truly secure. You could connect your smartphone to a cloud service that lets you "remote wipe" if need be – but control what you sync up to iCloud if you wish to remain truly private.

• Cloud services: all of the ones based in the US and the UK (including Dropbox, iCloud and Evernote) are open to surveillance, so encrypt information you don't want to share.

• The tangled web: as we become creatures of the smartphone, the tablet and the app, and as services, sites and accounts become ever more interconnected, remember that if one is breached others become unsafe. Keep track of which services you give permission to access others, and revoke this if one is compromised or you stop using it.

Even these security measures require both expertise and commitment, and Hancock fears that privacy concerns will frighten some users, particularly older people, away from the internet. "I get awfully frustrated with people of my generation who won't engage with the web," she says. "It's a miracle and I embrace it."

She gives the example of the Digismart scheme, of which she is a patron, which uses digital tools to mentor struggling school children, and has been introduced at 500 schools. "It is a joy to communicate your ideas to others, and we've seen kids who didn't have the confidence to express themselves in class end up making a speech to the whole school. It transforms their lives."

The scheme underlines how technology can be used as a creative tool, Hancock says. She believes the internet can help foster solutions to social problems through a myriad of small schemes and initiatives, but only if it remains accessible – and safe – for everyone.
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Bron: http://www.theguardian.com/world/20...-secure-are-you
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Mening: We zijn er allen wel van bewust hoe delicaat het internet wel niet kan zijn. Dat we moeten opletten met wat we delen en dat we onze beveiliging zo sterk mogelijk moeten maken. Doch zijn er nog velen onder ons die dit allemaal wel beweren te weten maar het tegelijkertijd volledig verwaarlozen, ikzelf ben er geen uitzondering op.
Op het vlak van wat ik op het internet zet ben ik wel vrij voorzichtig, meer omwille van het feit dat ik zelf niet de behoefte heb om zaken te delen. Maar ik ben geen krak als het aankomt op goed beveiligde wachtwoorden of beveiligingsvragen.

Er zijn zoveel sites waar ik wachtwoorden voor moet onthouden dat ik vroeger geneigd was steeds hetzelfde te nemen en vaak ook steeds dezelfde beveiligingsvragen. Later ben ik daar op teruggekomen en heb ik er zo'n 5 verschillende, maar toch leidt dit vaak tot een aantal pogingen vooraleer ik succesvol kan inloggen.

Ik vind het zonde dat het internet zo'n gevaarlijke plek is terwijl het een pracht van een uitvinding is dat mensen de wereld laat zien.