Know Your Info

Are we safe online? Can we trust our news sources? How can we be savvy consumers in an increasingly electronic world? We all have critical thinking skills to help us with these questions. Click images and arrows below for resources.

Online Privacy

A Good Starting Place

For in-depth information and custom privacy toolkits, it's hard to beat the Virtual Privacy Lab at the San Jose Public Library.

Read on for more of our best tips and favorite resources.

Basic Practices

Use strong passwords (lengthy, uppercase and lowercase, letters and numbers)

Set computers to log out after fifteen minutes

Log out of email and other services when finished

Use a Virtual Private Network like ExpressVPN or NordVPN

Keep your operating systems and applications up to date

Logins & Passwords

To store multiple passwords, use a password manager like LastPass, Dashlane, or KeePassX. For more rigorous password security, consider a physical device such as YubiKey.

Use two factor authentication when possible. For a list of websites and services that support two factor authentication visit 2FA.

Search Engines

Here's a few private search engines we recommend:

DuckDuckGo

Disconnect.me

StartPage

Browser Add-ons

"Privacy Badger is a browser add-on that stops advertisers and other third-party trackers from secretly tracking where you go and what pages you look at on the web."

"HTTPS Everywhere is a Firefox, Chrome, and Opera extension that encrypts your communications with many major websites, making your browsing more secure."

"NoScript allows JavaScript, Java and other executable content to run only from trusted domains of your choice..."

"uBlockOrigin is an efficient blocker: easy on memory and CPU footprint, and yet can load and enforce thousands more filters than other popular blockers out there."