[App]cessorise: Internet privacy apps

Once something is on the Internet it’s there forever. This is a somewhat contentious statement that we cannot really make without some qualification, a couple of provisos and at least one or two exceptions to the rule.

Many countries including the UAE operate national libraries that set out to archive public information and most have now embraced the online world in terms of the data they collate. Even cyberspace has its own International Internet Preservation Consortium at netpreserve.org seeking to catalogue and list as much of the web as possible.

But there are indeed exceptions to the permanency of the Internet. Indecent and inappropriate content is removed when it needs to be; famous personalities have succeeded in having various materials deleted by virtue of injunctions and legal proceeding from time to time; and entire websites have been taken down in some cases.

Interestingly and without going too deep into the technical and scientific jargon of this subject, no data is every really “deleted” per se until it is written over by new data. Dummy data, also known as “obfuscated” data, needs to be laid over previous memory banks to really ensure that your old Facebook photos (or anything else you have stored digitally) are gone for good.

Deleting and even deactivating your online accounts is all very well, but the data you have etched onto the servers sitting in the datacenters serving the online services you have subscribed to is not gone until it is overwritten. Cancelling mailing lists, labelling your previously subscribed newsgroups as spam and resetting your internet browser and removing cookies and/or history is really only scratching the surface. If you have left comments on other people’s blog posts, pictures, videos or online hosted audio files, then there is pretty much no way you can remove this data yourself.

The best we can do in terms of online privacy and control of our personal data is to think carefully about what we put up onto the Internet in the first place. But we also to take special care over securing our computers, particularly our mobile devices, which could be accessed by anyone when we are out and about. Thankfully a growing field of privacy apps has developed in parallel with traditional security and anti-virus apps to help keep our data locked down.

Secret Life PRO

Secret Life is perhaps best described as an app within an app. This file privacy app for Apple devices hides behind a tic-tac-toe board, which is noughts and crosses if you’re not familiar with the Americanised name of the classic game. The game actually plays in full and is displayed on a user’s desktop with the familiar X & O grid. To access your photos, notes, contacts and videos hidden beneath, the user simply holds a finger on the middle of the board for five seconds. This action presents a numeric password entry to access your Secret Life data. This app is inexpensive but not free, which is probably a good thing with security software overall i.e. you get the robustness you pay for.

Privacy Drive

If you are looking for some Windows 8 compatibility and are prepared to try your hand at something slightly more technical (or at least pay someone to do it for you) then Privacy Drive from Cybertron Software is an option. This encryption software can help you create “virtual disks” that act just like normal hard drives to lock, hide and encrypt all your important files and folders. You can password protect sensitive personal and commercial information and keep it away from unauthorised access. All data on the virtual disks is stored in encrypted form and is automatically encrypted or decrypted right before it is saved or loaded for you to view or work with.

Clueful for Android

Clueful for Android, as the name might suggest to you, provides clues about installed apps. This free software is still its beta phase on the Google Play Store but don’t let that put you off – Gmail was in beta for five years after all. As you are installing apps on your Android device, Clueful won’t be able to tell you whether they are good and safe, or bad and potentially harbouring malware, but it will be able to inform the user what is going on in the background. Its makers explain that Clueful is the only way to really understand how Apple iOS and Android “intrusive applications” might be potentially accessing and using your private data.

Who’s Looking

On the Mac app stores from True Blue Apps is Who’s Looking. This software has been designed to help you take a look at who was on your Mac when you were away. Although there are other apps that will use your computer’s dedicated webcam camera to take a single snap upon wake up, Who’s Looking continuously snaps and stores a sequence of compact images at an interval you set. There’s a quick view thumbnail viewer so you can cycle through a series of images if you happen to record a number of would-be eavesdroppers. When you quit and relaunch Who’s Looking, a notice is displayed so you can see if someone has tried to circumvent your privacy protection. All images are stored (unless you clear them with your password) so quitting Who’s Looking doesn’t help the snoop.

It is encouraging to see this new breed of privacy apps develop as we ourselves start to treat privacy and digital data security with an increasing amount of concern and respect. Use of strong passwords with an alphanumeric mix combining capitals and special characters should also be a fundamental perquisite. The tools are out there to help you stay safe, so don’t get caught out.