Digital Grimoire: collection #1
A curated collection of past recommendations from the Digital Grimoire, designed to help you get started with the basics.
Living in the Digital Age requires mental sharpness, a bit of outside-the-box thinking, and some essential precautions when using electronic devices or browsing online.
On Cyber Hermetica, you’ll find numerous tips and technical insights to enhance your personal cybersecurity and safeguard your data and digital identity. This is a curated collection of past recommendations from the Digital Grimoire, designed to help you get started with the basics.
Learn the Basics
Let’s start with the basics, which are simpler than you might think. Here are a few tips to significantly improve your privacy:
Use a password manager and an authentication app: tools like KeePass or Bitwarden can securely store and generate strong passwords.
Enable two-factor authentication (2FA): Always activate 2FA where possible, using apps like Google Authenticator or Authy or physical tokens for better security.
Navigate securely when traveling or in public places: a VPN can minimize your exposure by encrypting your internet traffic and masking your IP address. Especially useful when traveling or if you’re using public Wi-Fi.
You can explore more in these two articles:
Minimize your data exposure
The first and most important step to enhance your security and privacy is to eliminate unnecessary data sharing and minimize your digital footprint. One way to achieve this is by avoiding to share real data when you register to online services.
Avoid sharing your personal email addresses: use disposable or secondary email accounts for non-critical purposes. Aliasing services like SimpleLogin can greatly help.
Avoid sharing your personal telephone number: use disposable mobile numbers to receive registration OTPs or send SMSs with anonymous services such as SMS4SATS.
Switch to smartphones with secure operating systems: choose devices running privacy-focused operating systems like GrapheneOS, which minimize data collection and enhance control over permissions.
Read more here:
Secure your chats
We all use WhatsApp and/or Telegram daily. However, you should take five minuets to configure them to make them more secure and privacy-friendly.
Securing WhatsApp
Here’s how to make WhatsApp more secure:
Enable end-to-end encryption for backups.
Set up an access PIN.
Lock the app or specific chats using biometric authentication.
Enable message, photo, and video self-destruction.
Hide your IP address during voice calls.
Check out this simple guide by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which explains how to configure these settings on both Android and iOS.
Securing Telegram
For Telegram:
Choose a username to use in chats instead of your phone number.
Enable two-factor authentication (2FA) via Settings → Privacy & Security → Two-Step Verification.
Use Secret Chats for end-to-end encryption.
To limit data exposure, spam attempts, or unwanted access to your communications:
In Settings → Privacy & Security, set "Phone Number" and "Last Seen & Online" to Nobody, and "Profile Photo" and "Forwarded Messages" to My Contacts.
For Calls, use the My Contacts option to hide your IP address.
Set Groups to My Contacts to avoid being added to unwanted groups.
Enable the Passcode Lock to protect access to your messages.
For Android users, the FOSS version of Telegram, available on F-Droid (a free app store independent of Google), removes the connection to Google Play Services, providing even greater privacy.
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