At an event hosted by URL Media in Queens I was reminded of the ways in which digital safety is a community responsibility as well as a series of personal practices.

Individual digital hygiene, even if excellent, is no real match for bad password habits practiced by people with whom you regularly communicate. Your privacy could be undermined without your knowledge if other members of your household are prone to sharing significant amounts of sensitive (meta)data online.

Do you have a plan for if someone calls a loved one using a voice clone and pretending to be you? What will you do if someone is harassing a friend or family member using deepfake video? How are we talking to the children in our lives about the risks and safety limitations of AI?

What do you want to happen to your email accounts or online photos or domain names after you die? Who do you want to have access to your accounts? Do you want anyone to know what you were really reading on your Kindle this whole time?

The folks at Cyber Collective have guides on this (and the founder mentioned Brooklyn-made SCAM HERO as another resource). I’ve also found the National Cybersecurity Alliance to be useful — see for instance their guide on family code words in the age of AI. AARP keeps a regularly updated list of the top scams targeting older adults.

We must keep each other safe — online or off.

The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it   
and not at all famous to the one who is pictured.   

I want to be famous to shuffling men   
who smile while crossing streets,   
sticky children in grocery lines,   
famous as the one who smiled back.

I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,   
or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,   
but because it never forgot what it could do.
— from Famous by Naomi Shihab Nye