Pri­vacy and data pro­tec­tion on the Internet

An ever increasing number of data is stored on the Internet nowa­days – whether you are aware of it or not. But how secure are your per­sonal data?

Use your browser securely

Your browser is your gateway to the Internet. You should change some rel­e­vant set­tings to ensure your data are protected.

Delete cookies, or pre­vent them from being stored

Cookies are text files con­taining infor­ma­tion about your surfing behav­iour. Once you finish your Internet ses­sion, you should delete them. Alter­na­tively, you can also surf in incog­nito or pri­vate mode, so that your browser doesn’t store any data in the first place.

Don’t store any pass­words in your browser
It is a very risky prac­tice to store your pass­words in your browser. You should use a pass­word man­ager instead.

Use secure search engines
Google is the search engine used most often, but it col­lects a large quan­tity of data about you and your surfing behav­iour. Use alter­na­tives such as “Duck­DuckGo” which don’t analyse or store per­sonal data.

Use anti-tracking software
Exten­sions for common browsers such as “Ghostery” block hidden ser­vices which transmit per­sonal data in the back­ground while surfing. Fur­ther information

Be cir­cum­spect with your passwords

Web shops, e-mail accounts, e-banking, etc.: Secure pass­words are crit­ical to iden­tify users.

Use secure passwords
The impor­tant thing to note is that you shouldn’t just choose a com­plex pass­word, but also use dif­ferent pass­words for dif­ferent services.

Use a pass­word manager
Hardly anyone can remember all their pass­words. A pass­word man­ager serves to save all your pass­words in encrypted form.

Be careful with social media

We can no longer do without social media such as Face­book, Twitter or Insta­gram in our everyday lives, yet they require respon­sible behaviour.

Be restrained in your communications
Only pub­lish infor­ma­tion you would also be happy to tell any stranger in the street as well. Fur­ther information

Securely con­figure the social media you use
Limit access to the infor­ma­tion you pub­lish. Our instruc­tions are meant to assist you in estab­lishing secure Face­book, Twitter, Insta­gram and LinkedIn configuration.

Be vig­i­lant when using cloud storage

Moving data to external storage on the Internet, for instance using Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Cloud or iCloud, is quite com­fort­able. Yet you still have to take into account secu­rity aspects here, too.

Choose a suit­able cloud provider
Those large inter­na­tional providers usu­ally store your data abroad, some­thing which can lead to local data pro­tec­tion laws being infringed. You should there­fore choose a Swiss provider, if possible.

Use cloud storage securely
If pos­sible, use two factor authen­ti­ca­tion, sim­ilar to the method used with e-banking. You should reg­u­larly create local back-ups of all your data stored in the cloud, too.

Con­figure your oper­ating system securely

Many oper­ating sys­tems reg­u­larly transmit reports about users to the system oper­ator. You can usu­ally at least par­tially switch off this function.

Limit data trans­mis­sion in Windows
Amongst other things, Win­dows analyses per­sonal data and some­times also trans­mits them to Microsoft. How­ever, you can strictly limit such data transmissions.

Data pro­tec­tion and duty to pro­vide information

In accor­dance with Swiss law, a variety of oblig­a­tions are placed on web­site oper­a­tors to war­rant data are pro­tected. For instance, a Legal Notice and data pro­tec­tion state­ment are mandatory.

Every web­site must inform vis­i­tors of the kind of per­sonal data it col­lects and stores, and for what pur­pose. Such per­sonal data also include online Ids, for instance your ID address and click behav­iour. Hence some­thing almost every web­site stores.

In addi­tion, there is the duty of dis­clo­sure: If you would like to find out what kind of data is stored about you, you are enti­tled to receive this infor­ma­tion free of charge. If any of your stored data are incor­rect, they will have to be cor­rected or deleted if you request this.