Security Sweep
Trying out a lot of services and apps means you inevitable end up with a lot of services being interconnected. My WordPress website links to my Twitter account, Byword can access my Dropbox Folder, and Spotify can see my Facebook feed.These kinds of interconnected services are handy: they allow you to centralise your data on a few platforms instead of it living in containers specific to each platform.Imagine a seperate friend feed for every service you try instead of your Twitter or Facebook connections being available immediately after you sign up. Or worse, imagine that you to copy all your data to a new text writing app each time you’d like to try one out. No, I prefer linking an app my Dropbox account any given day of the week.
But since clicking connect is easy, you link up plenty of services. And if you’re lazy like me, you probably don’t disconnect the app before you delete it.
Security Sweep
That’s why —for a while now— I’ve got this task in OmniFocus that reminds me each summer (and Christmas) to do a full security checkup for all the major services I use: Twitter, Dropbox, Evernote, iCloud, Facebook,…
I login to the service, and I do the following four things:
- I change the current password and update both 1Password and iCloud Keychain.
- I check the two-factor authentication settings and verify my Recovery Key.
- I update my email address and other contact information if needed.
- I disconnect all apps connected to the service that I don’t use anymore.
This way I know the platforms are secure, up to date and that no strange services or apps can access to my data. Call me paranoia, but for these kind of core services, security stands above all.
