Managing your online privacy is harder than you think. It is designed to be so with all technology companies, big and small, that use your details and personal data as a profit mechanism. It’s probably never going to stop, so it’s up to us to figure out how to limit what we give away.
There is also the actual “danger” factor where someone can find their way into a service and access the data stored there. It can be as mundane as your email address and Twitter username, but it can also be passwords or financial information.
Either way, it’s usually up to you to sort out your personal aftermath. More importantly, it’s up to you to do everything you can to keep things tidy and know when you need to take action.
It’s a terrible solution. I like to cruise through the internet and read about cyber security and information security issues because I’m so silly. There are many others like me and even people who are actually good at spotting and helping to fix problems when they occur.
You are probably not one of these. It’s OK to admit that you don’t like auditing all your accounts or checking forums to see which company got hacked this week. It’s overwhelming, so you probably need some help. This is where Jumbo Privacy comes into play.
What you need to know
There are two things to know about Jumbo Privacy right up front – if you’re interested in security and privacy enough to understand everything the app does, you probably don’t need to. It wasn’t built for you or me.
The second is that everyone else would benefit from using Jumbo Privacy, but it’s a complicated app filled with all kinds of options and settings. Enough to even make you want to give up. But don’t – when you take the time to read all the information presented, you can work your way through it and come out much better than you were before you installed it.
What does Jumbo Privacy do?
Jumbo Privacy does a lot. The core function of the app is to scan your online accounts – Google, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter and more are fully supported – and find ways to make your identity more secure and your footprint less visible. Even the most secure phone is no good without the right tools.
It does this by looking at tracking services, two-factor authentication and password security, and monitoring for data breaches. The tools it offers to help you include ways to set up the two-factor authentication you should use, set up ad tracking blocking software, and clean up the things you’ve shared on social media.
Jumbo includes its own 2FA client software (think Google Authenticator or Microsoft Authenticator) and an internal VPN to block tracking and ads to make this possible. Delving deeper into the settings, you can also automatically archive social media posts while keeping a copy safe inside the app’s vault.
There are other great features too. Jumbo monitors and searches your details in the event of a data breach online. The app will then notify you whenever a service you use is hacked and your details exposed, offering steps and tools to help you take appropriate action.
And since even the best app could never find everything wrong with the internet, Jumbo offers $25,000 in identity theft insurance once you’ve set everything up and follow the app’s best practices. Free.
Yes, for free. Jumbo used to have an excellent way for users to pay what it’s worth for premium features, even making them available to anyone in a pinch who contacted the developers. Life comes at you fast, you know?
Recent changes have enabled the team to offer all features for free to everyone. This happens because the company is going to offer a business package, not because they want to start selling your data or have scaled back their options.
Should you try it?
The only thing I didn’t like about the app is how the included VPN can get slow, but that can happen with any VPN. That said, it didn’t do much for me and didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know. But I know how much time and effort I spent searching for all that information and checking the privacy settings myself – Jumbo will just do it for you.
All data you send and receive is encrypted, and the company has one Raw privacy policy presented in two ways – the traditional way for lawyers and geeks to sort through and a plain language version that tells you what you share, what the company does with it all, and how it works while minimizing data collection.
Yes, try it. It’s free and the company is very clear about handling your data. Once you have the time to follow all the settings and features, you’ll probably be glad you did. And if it doesn’t offer anything for you, that’s also cool because you can just delete it and know that your data isn’t sent to a server and whisked away forever.
Most of all, I would recommend Jumbo Privacy to anyone because of the company’s core principles. They put it very succinctly on their privacy policy page:
If you have any questions about our approach, please contact [email protected]. We are always happy to talk about it because we believe this is the way personal data should always be processed.
We need more such companies. You can find the Jumbo Privacy app on Google Play.
