Businesses that handle data belonging to their customers are being scrutinized more and more with the arrival of regulatory changes such as the EU's General Data Protection Regulation, designed to create a level playing field and stipulate adequate security measures to protect consumer privacy and data.
Companies will often encrypt your information as part of the process, which is a way to encode information to make it unreadable by unauthorized parties.
One way this is achieved is by using SSL and TLS certificates that support encryption on website domains. Let's Encrypt offers free SSL/TLS certificates to webmasters who wish to improve their websites' security. Unfortunately, this has also led to the adoption of SSL by fraudsters.
Apple, Google, and Mozilla have forced TLS certificate lifespans to reduce, with roughly a year becoming an acceptable lifespan for certificates.
End-to-end encryption is also becoming more popular. This form of encryption prevents anyone except those communicating from accessing or reading the content of messages, including vendors themselves.
Following Snowden's disclosure of the NSA's mass surveillance activities, end-to-end encryption has been widely adopted by many online communication services -- much to the chagrin of government and law enforcement agencies. With a recent shift to working from home practices prompted by COVID-19, this has expanded to include video conferencing tools such as Zoom.
See also: Zoom backtracks and plans to offer end-to-end encryption to all users | Google is adding end-to-end encryption to its Android Messages app | Facebook and Google refuse 1 in 5 Australian law enforcement data access requests
Privacy advocates may cheer, but governments and law enforcement agencies have not rejoiced at the trend -- and a political battlefield has emerged between tech vendors and governments that are attempting to enforce the inclusion of deliberate backdoors into encrypted systems.
It is up to us to make use of any privacy-enabling technology we have at hand. Below are some guides with simple steps to get you started.
Also: FBI warning: Crooks are using fake QR codes to steal your passwords and money | Meta and Twitter want a review of Australian government's social media laws next year | Microsoft: This new browser feature is 'huge step forward' against zero-day threats | UK government announces crackdown on cryptocurrency adverts
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