What practical steps can individuals take to protect privacy online?

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Protecting privacy online hinges on controlling access to your accounts. Using strong, unique passwords for each service and enabling two-factor authentication provides a robust defense. Unique passwords prevent credential stuffing across sites, so a breach on one site won’t automatically grant access to others. Two-factor authentication adds a second barrier, so even if a password is compromised, an attacker would still need the second factor to log in.

Practically, use a password manager to generate and store long, unique passwords, and enable two-factor authentication on important accounts such as email, banking, and cloud storage. Favor authenticator apps or hardware keys for the second factor rather than SMS when possible.

Options that involve sharing data widely, disabling privacy settings, or relying on public Wi‑Fi do not enhance privacy and, in fact, raise risk: exposing more data, removing protections, or relying on networks that can be intercepted.