In a blog post, Google promotes two-factor authentication (2FA). In fact, they are right – passwords can be made strong, but with another way to confirm their identity when logging in, the strength increases many times over.
However, we need to be clear about why Google advocates 2FA. They do it not to increase your security but to keep the information they have about you to themselves.
You have of course heard that “if something is free you are the product” and this also applies to everything that Google offers us. No company could afford to offer users something for free if it were not for the fact that they get paid by others.
Google makes a living selling information about us to its advertising buyers and we find it problematic that we as users of their services do not know to whom they sell information about us. In addition, we do not know what information Google has about us and thus can resell, the only thing we can be sure of is that they know much more about us than we can ever imagine.
You can do a lot to not leave so many traces behind when you are online:
- You can use different search engines to not put all the eggs in one basket and only use Google’s search engine
- Turn off the GPS in your phone when you do not need to have it activated
- Use a VPN service in laptop, tablet and mobile phone so that your IP address does not reveal exactly where you are and who you have in your vicinity
As for alternatives to Google’s services, we can, for example, recommend OpenStreetMap and DuckDuckGo. If you need a cloud service, NextCloud may be an option.
If you search for “Best VPN service” on any search engine, you will get a lot of links to sites that may seem serious but which all have in common that the more kick-back VPN service pays to the site, the better “rating” gets those of the site. Our tip is that you use Mullvad VPN!