Martin Hellweg - Safe Surfer: Protecting Your Privacy in the Digital World

Safe Surfer

Protecting Your Privacy in the Digital Age

Martin Hellweg

All rights reserved. No part of this book shall be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, magnetic, photographic including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission of the publisher. No patent liability is assumed with respect to the use of the information contained herein. Although every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this book, the publisher and author assume no responsibility for errors or omissions. Neither is any liability assumed for damages resulting from the use of the information contained herein.

Copyright 2015 by Martin Hellweg

ISBN 978-1-4958-0803-6

ISBN 978-1-4958-0804-3 eBook

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2015913468

of the English edition Martin Hellweg,

Zurich/Switzerland 2015. All rights reserved.

Translated from the German original by:

Mark Wilch, Vienna/Austria

Edited by:

Gwenyth Lloyd, Bristol/UK

of the original German edition Ullstein Buchverlage Gmbh,

Berlin/Germany 2014. All rights reserved.

Published September 2015

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Table of Contents

It was 10 in the morning and I was on my way to a conference when my personal assistant forwarded a call to me. Eve, a young woman from Cologne, was in a state of shock. Her ex-boyfriend had just launched a digital attack against her. The evening before, her ex had asked her to come back to him but Eve had refused. She had told him just this in a calm yet firm voice and asked him to stop contacting her. Eve wanted to gain some distance at last and thought it would be best for him too. She felt that it was best that they both start a new chapter in their lives. She would never have dreamt that her ex would be capable of this kind of deceit. He had obviously spent weeks preparing the attack. Basically, everything had started two years before: Back then he had kept a hidden camera running while they were intimate with each other. It was unconceivable: Since that morning, videos of their most private moments with each other had been uploaded to various porn websites on the Internet. A neighbor of her parents also reported having received a DVD with these videos in the mail. As we found out later, her ex-boyfriend had sent dozens of these DVDs all around Cologne and elsewhere to people in her personal and professional life.

Frank had finally achieved the coveted post of manager of a five-star hotel in Los Angeles after twenty-five years of hard work. One of the service employees Frank was supervising had ashes on his forehead in the shape of a religious symbol. In the midday sun, the symbol gradually began running not an appetizing sight. Frank had already asked the employee twice to remove the ashes but the employee had not heeded his requests. In the kitchen the dam finally broke. Frank lost his patience and shouted at the employee: Wipe that f****** thing off your face! Of course, he should not have lost his composure, but the consequences of his losing control of himself for this one moment in his long professional life were dramatic. The union blew up the incident as an obvious act of discrimination. This supposed act of discrimination received newspaper and TV coverage. Anyone looking for Frank on the Internet would find site after site with references to this one moment of weakness in his life. Frank lost his job and was unable to find a new one for three years. He ended up taking a position at a casino hotel in the Chinese special administrative district of Macau while his wife and children remained in Los Angeles. He saw them twice a year a high price to pay for one unguarded moment.

Pastor Alex could not believe his eyes. Police were searching his house and confiscating his computers in response to an anonymous tip they had received. Upon inspection, the police did find child pornography on one of his hard drives. Pastor Alex was completely unaware of the images, he had never downloaded or viewed any child pornography and was completely baffled as to how this material had made its way onto his hard drive. If the testimony of a witness shortly thereafter had not explained what had actually happened, his life would have been ruined. He could have lost his family and everything he had worked for. It came to light that a right-wing criminal hacker had remotely uploaded the photos onto Alexs laptop. The intent was to take revenge on Pastor Alex for fighting right-wing extremism in his local community. He had done so with great personal dedication and a degree of success. For instance, following an attack on a kebab shop, his efforts had made it possible to track down and arrest the perpetrators. Now Pastor Alex himself had almost become the victim of an attack a digital attack.

These three stories did not happen exactly as described above. They are based on the experiences of people I have known in my own life and on situations to which I have become privy to in my capacity as a Virtual Bodyguard These hackers can remotely hijack our laptop webcam, taking pictures of us without our knowledge. Then there are employers who surreptitiously monitor their employees private e-mail. Internet mobbing is another example of these dangers among teenagers, co-workers or former friends.

These stories may dampen some peoples enthusiasm about the digital age. This would be very regrettable because the existence of the Internet has made the world more transparent, more social and more democratic. Oppressed people use social networks to organize themselves and to assert their rights. Students without means can attend online courses at elite American universities without having to pay a cent to set foot on campus. Online encyclopedias such as Wikipedia make knowledge immediatey available to everyone today, thereby replacing static standard works such as the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Innovations in the digital world improve the quality of our everyday lives as well. Smartphones and laptops let us be productive whereever we are. This book is a prime example. I have written it not only at my desk, but also on the train and while enjoying red wine and pasta in the winter sun in Ticino. Nearly the whole time, I had online access to valuable information. I was able to write down my thoughts as they came to me anywhere I happened to be.

The digital world has changed our lives considerably and that is a very positive thing. At the same time we have to learn to handle these many innovations with proper awareness, to minimize any detrimental effects on our lives resulting from them. This is a perfectly normal learning curve. Motorized traffic was also something unknown and chaotic when it first occurred. Apparently, people even initially considered having a horse walk in front of each car, the idea being that anything faster than a horse could be dangerous. Today we know there are clear rules. We learn them, practice driving and get a drivers license. Road traffic has become quite safe. There is a residual risk, however, because there is no such thing as hazard-free mobility. The task is to minimize the inherent risk.