Resources

A short list, kept short on purpose.

Every link below is one I use or check against. Nothing here is sponsored, and nothing here requires an account to read.

Check whether you have already been exposed

• Have I Been Pwned Troy Hunt's breach index. Search an email address to see which known breaches it appears in. Useful less as a scare tactic than as a way to find out which passwords are already circulating.

Public guidance worth reading

• CISA — Secure Our World The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency's plain-language guidance on passwords, multifactor authentication, phishing and updates. Written for a general audience, unusually free of vendor interest.
• OAIC — Your privacy rights The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner explains what Australian organisations may collect, and how to complain. The relevant context if you are publishing from Australia.
• Australian Cyber Security Centre The ACSC's public guidance and reporting service, including advice aimed at individuals and small organisations rather than enterprises.

If you want to read the research

• Anne Helmond — Identity 2.0: Constructing identity with cultural software The idea that online identity is assembled by platforms and search engines, not simply expressed by users. The clearest short account I have found of why a web presence is never entirely your own.
• Mark Carrigan — Social media and ambient intimacy On the background awareness that social platforms create: a low-level, continuous sense of other people's lives. Explains the texture of the medium better than most critiques.

Tools

• A password manager (Bitwarden, 1Password, KeePassXC) Any of these is better than a reused password. The point is unique credentials plus autofill that only fires on a known domain.
• An authenticator app (Aegis, Ente Auth, or the built-in iOS/Android one) Preferable to SMS codes, which are exposed to number porting and interception.
• ExifTool Strips metadata from photographs before publishing. The fastest way to stop publishing the GPS coordinates of where you live.

This page is a curated list with attribution, not a republication. Descriptions are my own summaries; the linked pages remain the work and property of their authors.