Take control of your online privacy!
Are you concerned about the security and privacy of your online and mobile activity? Do you want to learn practical ways to protect yourself against spies and cybercriminals? Join us to learn all about tools that can help protect you against surveillance and exploitation.
In our basic class, we’ll discuss privacy options for browsers, mobile devices, and social media, protection against viruses, malware, and spyware, and more. The intermediate class will go further, demonstrating the privacy tools of the basic class plus encrypted chat services, VPNs and proxies, and disk and file encryption.
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Bring your own laptop and mobile device, or borrow one of the library’s laptops. Registration is required.
- Online privacy & security: basic class on July 22nd from 6:30-8:30 pm. Registration begins July 1st
- Online privacy & security: intermediate class on July 31st from 6:30-8:30 pm. Registration begins July 8th
- Online privacy & security: basic class on August 6th from 6:30-8:30 pm. Registration begins July 14th
To register, please visit the Reference Desk or call 617.972.6436 to sign up.
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If you can’t make it to the classes, you can still take some steps to protect your online privacy. Start by downloading the free Firefox web browser (https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/). Firefox is a better browser for privacy because it’s open-source, which means that the source code is available for anyone to view and edit. If someone compromised the code by adding a surveillance beacon, at least one of the millions of developers working on Firefox would catch it.
You can also download and install the free plug-in HTTPS Everywhere (https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere). This plug-in was created by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and helps to keep your web communications more private and secure through encryption.
Lastly, we recommend that you use strong passwords for every online account. A free password manager like LastPass (https://lastpass.com/) can help by generating strong passwords for you and storing them in one safe, password-protected place. Then you’ll only need to remember your LastPass password!
