This was not a good year for our data. In fact, like the previous year, it saw some of the most egregious breaches of our data in history. By far the most infamous one was the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal. In March 2018 it was revealed that in 2015 the Trump campaign firm paid for the scraped Facebook data of at least 87 million users so that it could better influence voters in elections.

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Related: Use these 9 critical iPhone privacy and security settings right now A secure messaging app Messaging apps that support end-to-end encryption prevent third-parties, even the companies that run the messaging service, from reading your messages. The gold standard in secure messaging apps is Signal, which is what Edward Snowden swears by. The app is as user friendly as any other messaging app–even if it doesn’t have all the bells and whistles of Facebook Messenger. Speaking of which, stop using Facebook Messenger. Your Messages are not only not encrypted, but Facebook’s systems read them so they can target you with ads. If you and your friends don’t want to use Signal, opt for other encrypted messaging apps like Apple’s iMessage or WhatsApp. Keep in mind, however, that WhatsApp is owned by Facebook and its original founders have now left the company over rumored disagreements between Facebook’s plans for the app in the future. A password manager Most people use the same weak password on every site they belong to, or at best have three to four passwords they alternate between. They’re probably likely to share some of those passwords with family members too. Don’t do that. Having just a few passwords means that whoever gets one credential can use it to login as you everywhere else. You need to start using strong, unique passwords for every site you visit. To do that, you’ll need help from the machines. Password managers create and save unique, highly complex passwords automatically and fill them in at sites you want to log in at—based on one very strong master password or key. Some of the best password managers are Dashlane and 1Password. And in the latest macOS Mojave and iOS 12, Apple has provided a password manager for free of charge. And in case you aren’t already, it’s a good idea to set up 2-factor authentication for every important website and service you use. You can find instructions on how to set that up for most websites at TwoFactorAuth.org.

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