Choose your location
The Markup
Use Screen Time To Protect Your iPhone from Thieves
The Gentle January series shares one practical privacy tip a day from a Markup staffer who actually uses the advice in their own life. I lose track of my phone a lot more than I’d like to admit. Yes, it normally turns up between the couch cushions, in the pile of laundry I’m folding, or underneath my dog (I blame her), but I’ve had enough close calls to make sure I have precautions in place in case my phone falls into the wrong hands.
Browse the Web in “Private” Mode
The Gentle January series shares one practical privacy tip a day from a Markup staffer who actually uses the advice in their own life. The Markup’s editor-in-chief, Sisi Wei, already advised you to use a privacy-friendly browser. I’ve got another recommendation that is supported by basically any browser: browse in “private” or “incognito” mode. Various browsers call it one thing or the other, but Chrome, Firefox, Brave, Safari, and Edge all have their version and, especially if you’re using one of the less extreme browsers when it comes to privacy, this method offers you more anonymity online.
The Markup Wins Philip Meyer Journalism Award
The Markup’s investigative series on vast internet disparities in the United States, “Still Loading,” has won first place in the Philip Meyer Journalism Award, which recognizes the best uses of social science research methods in journalism. Judges said the series tells “a powerful story about a critical...
Ditch Google Maps
The Gentle January series shares one practical privacy tip a day from a Markup staffer who actually uses the advice in their own life. I have spent a lot of time reporting on the collection and sale of consumer location data. After digging into the way our precise movements are monetized for advertising or other business purposes, I decided I needed to limit my own daily data exhaust.
Stop TikTok from Suggesting Your Account to Others
The Gentle January series shares one practical privacy tip a day from a Markup staffer who actually uses the advice in their own life. If you’re like me and form part of the nearly one billion individuals who have downloaded TikTok, you may have noticed something strange while scrolling the For You page: the “people you may know.”
Bad Internet? Good Chance You’ll Miss a Key NFL Playoff Game This Weekend
With all of the uncertainty in the world today, there are few simple pleasures we can count on. In my family, football tops the list on Sundays (and Mondays and Thursdays and under the Friday Night Lights, but you get the point). But this Saturday, for the first time ever, swaths of the country will be denied viewership to one playoff game exclusively streaming on Peacock: The Miami Dolphins versus the reigning superbowl champs, the Kansas City Chiefs. Peacock, the streaming service from NBCUniversal, paid the NFL $110 million for sole streaming rights to this game; only fans in Miami and Kansas City will be able to watch the game on their local NBC channel. The rest of us must purchase a Peacock subscription, which starts at $5.99 a month.
Sign Up for a Simple Burner Phone Number
The Gentle January series shares one practical privacy tip a day from a Markup staffer who actually uses the advice in their own life. As a privacy-conscious reporter, I like to have a little separation between my work and home life. One of the ways I do this is by having a Google Voice number in addition to my personal number. Google Voice is a voice over internet protocol (VOiP) service that gives you a real phone number attached to your Google account. You can use it exactly as you would your regular number—calling, SMS texting, getting voicemails—without giving out your actual phone number. And you can use it to sign up for Signal, the encrypted messaging app, for an extra layer of anonymity. If you get spammed, doxxed, or harassed, you can relinquish the Google Voice number and get a new one.
Get a New Wireless Router
The Gentle January series shares one practical privacy tip a day from a Markup staffer who actually uses the advice in their own life. Before I joined The Markup last summer, I replaced my four-year-old wireless router in the hopes of avoiding the dreaded “unstable connection” messages during meetings on Zoom and Slack. (I had already replaced my eight-year-old cable modem the year before.) My new router not only handles my calls flawlessly but also offers better security, thanks to support for the WPA3 protocol, which makes your Wi-Fi password much harder to crack. If you haven’t upgraded your router since before 2020, it’s likely time for a new one—the WPA3 protocol has been mandatory on all routers released since July 2020, at least if their manufacturers want certification from the Wi-Fi Alliance.
Use a Password Manager To Protect Yourself From Breaches
The Gentle January series shares one practical privacy tip a day from a Markup staffer who actually uses the advice in their own life. I created my first-ever internet password by physically visiting a room in the basement of a severely ugly building on the University of California, Berkeley campus. In that server room, I created the password for my first email account.
Plagiarism Detection Tools Offer a False Sense of Accuracy
When Katherine Pickering Antonova became a history professor in 2008, she got access to the plagiarism detection software tools Turnitin and SafeAssign. At first blush, she thought the technology would be great. She had just finished a graduate program where she had manually graded papers as a teaching assistant, meticulously checking students’ suspect phrases to see if any showed up elsewhere.
Keep Your (Current) Location Off Instagram
The Gentle January series shares one practical privacy tip a day from a Markup staffer who actually uses the advice in their own life. My sensitivity to social media privacy began when my Instagram posts resulted in a snooping aunt telling my parents about the party I shouldn’t have been at one high school weekend. Since then, I’ve had an acute awareness of both what I post on social media and who can see it. While I run The Markup’s social media accounts, my personal accounts are private. But for my colleagues that require public profiles for their line of work, maintaining privacy isn’t as simple as making your account private.
In Emails, Contractor Tries To Orchestrate New Federal Transplant Policy
Executives tasked with ensuring vital transplant organs reached the country’s sickest people engaged in a secretive scheme to force a federal policy change, curtailing life-saving liver transplants in several poorer states. The scheme, revealed in newly unsealed court documents, is the latest evidence that the 2020 policy change was...
Lock Down Your Accounts with Extra Authentication
The Gentle January series shares one practical privacy tip a day from a Markup staffer who actually uses the advice in their own life. Back in the early days of Twitter, it seemed like high-profile celebrity hacks were constant. Once I became a full-fledged journalist with a Twitter presence, one early piece of advice I got was to lock up my accounts through two-factor authentication—a tool that provides an extra layer of security by logging users in with a special identifier along with the usual password. Many services, including social media companies, have an option that will text users a unique code or that will pair with an authentication app when a person logs in, making it more difficult for hackers to pry into their accounts. Two-factor options are usually available under the security settings for a service.
What Happens When you Roleplay with ChatGPT
Hello World is a weekly newsletter—delivered every Saturday morning—that goes deep into our original reporting and the questions we put to big thinkers in the field. Browse the archive here. Hi everyone,. Happy New Year. It’s Sisi here. In 2023, many companies started hiring for an AI...
Just Accept the Dang Software Update
The Gentle January series shares one practical privacy tip a day from a Markup staffer who actually uses the advice in their own life. When fending off hackers, you’re not in it alone. Yes, vulnerabilities in the software you use can be exploited by cybercriminals to steal your personal data. But software makers constantly work to identify such vulnerabilities and patch them. All you have to do is install these fixes as soon as you are notified that a software update is available.
Use a Browser That Blocks Tracking
The Gentle January series shares one practical privacy tip a day from a Markup staffer who actually uses the advice in their own life. I’ve been blocking ads on the internet for as long as I can remember. As a teenager, I started doing so because ads were ugly and I learned that browser extensions like Adblock Plus could automatically hide them.
Put a Privacy Protector on Your Screen
The Gentle January series shares one practical privacy tip a day from a Markup staffer who actually uses the advice in their own life. I’m one of those people who always arrives at the airport many hours before flying. I anticipate I’ll encounter every potential hiccup that could prompt a delay, like agonizingly slow conveyor belts at security, or making my way to LaGuardia only to realize I’m actually flying out of JFK. Better safe than sorry.
Gentle January: The Least Intimidating Privacy Tips from The Markup
This is the time of year when you will absolutely see self-help articles with intimidating words like “challenge,” “tune up,” and, of course, “resolution.”. At The Markup, we thought we’d try something different. We know that, right now, many people are feeling anxious about technology (*cough* artificial intelligence) and how fast it’s developing. So we wanted to kick off 2024 together with something calming, practical—and, dare we say, fun.
The Markup’s Year in Illustration: 2023
While generative AI actively seeks to devalue creative work, we turn to illustrators and their expertise to amplify and improve our reporting on technology. Illustration is a powerful storytelling tool at The Markup, where our investigations tend to be about things happening behind screens and browser windows, invisible or seemingly innocuous to the naked eye.
The Markup
523+
Posts
2M+
Views
The Markup is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates how powerful institutions are using technology to change our society.
Welcome to NewsBreak, an open platform where diverse perspectives converge. Most of our content comes from established publications and journalists, as well as from our extensive network of tens of thousands of creators who contribute to our platform. We empower individuals to share insightful viewpoints through short posts and comments. It’s essential to note our commitment to transparency: our Terms of Use acknowledge that our services may not always be error-free, and our Community Standards emphasize our discretion in enforcing policies. We strive to foster a dynamic environment for free expression and robust discourse through safety guardrails of human and AI moderation. Join us in shaping the news narrative together.