The Ministry of Internal Affairs named three main rules of digital hygiene

Three rules from the Ministry of Internal Affairs

Filipp Nemov, head of the department for combating the unlawful use of information and communication technologies at the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs, named three basic rules of digital hygiene, TASS reports. The first is control over the spread of personal data. According to him, this includes not only a phone number, account, or email, but also anything from which a person can be identified. The second rule is to understand the functionality of internet tools and the capabilities available in them, including hidden ones. The third is keeping your knowledge of cybersecurity up to date: threats are constantly changing, and cyberattack methods transform along with them, so it is important to follow new trends in this field.

Context: caution with neural networks

The Ministry of Internal Affairs' recommendations are complemented by an earlier warning from IT expert Igor Bederev: personal data, payment information, and documents should not be trusted to neural networks, as this can lead to a leak. According to him, any correspondence with an AI agent can be read by an employee of the company that developed the model. The practical message of both statements is the same: personal data should only be shared where the user understands who can access it and how, and one's understanding of the risks needs to be regularly updated, since attack methods change along with the threats.