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Protecting Yourself on the Internet (Streamer Edition) [TwitchCon 2016 Panel]

Protecting Yourself on the Internet TwitchCon 2016

For the complete list of panels, check out the main TwitchCon 2016 Panel Recap post.

VoD link: https://www.twitch.tv/twitchconfrankerz/v/92237135?t=04h30m21s
FrankerZ Theater Day One
Moderator: MaximusRaeke
Participants: theCLASSIFIEDcast, Danotage

  • Cyber security is important because you want to keep yourself and your family safe.
  • There are 2 types of threats that streamers are vulnerable to:
    • DDOS-attack
    • Swatting
  • A DDOS-attack means that the attacker sends so many packets to your network that it doesn’t know how to handle them and gets stuck, bringing down your internet and your stream
  • Ways to deal with a DDOS-attack when you are being targeted:
    • Get your ISP to change your IP-address
    • Use a VPN or proxy
  • Swatting means that someone is trying to deceive law enforcement to dispatch an emergency response to your home based on a false report.
  • Swatting can cause physical harm and psychological. Above all law enforcement is wasting time on a false situation when they could be helping someone.
  • Ways to deal with swatting:
    • Go to local law enforcement and explain that you are a possible target for Swatting so they can keep track of it.
    • Ask the police to call you before they respond to a 911 call.
  • This will not prevent swatting from happening, but when it does it will be in a less hostile environment.
  • A good way to prevent both of these threats from happening is protecting your IP-address. Your IP-address is basically where you live on the internet and it’s all they need in order to DDOS you. It can also be used to find additional info about you and your system.
  • You can call your ISP and set up extra security measures for people to access your account with info they acquired on the internet, set up a password for instance.
  • Be careful with what software you download. A lot of early access games don’t focus on protection so it’s generally easy to find out your IP.
  • Doxxing is researching someone’s personal information and using this against someone or publicizing this information.
  • Some things to make it harder for people to find out personal information:
    • Don’t use monitor-capture. It takes one slip up on stream to leak personal info about yourself or others.
    • Include your family, explain to them that exposing information about you could be dangerous.
    • Separate your personal information from your Twitch information.
    • Pay attention to the emails you receive, if you don’t trust it research it before clicking any links.
    • See if there’s information about you out on the internet on for instance a white pages website and request that they remove your information.
    • 2-factor authentication is your friend!
    • Every once in awhile Google your own name and see what you and others can find.
    • If you use PayPal, get a business account because when people donate to you they can see your personal info when they donate to personal accounts.
    • Use a password manager to remember your passwords, but make you use one that encrypts your passwords.
  • EXIF data is data stored in pictures. In this data, people could find the GPS coordinates of where you took the picture. You can prevent this by disabling GPS when taking pictures.
  • Social media websites like Twitter and Facebook will automatically remove this information from your picture, services like Google Drive doesn’t.
  • 2-factor authentication is really important. 2-factor authentication means that there is more authentication required to access your account than just your password. For instance, on Twitch, you install an app on your phone that gives you a code that you use next to your information to login or request a password change.

About the Author

Lowco

I'm a full time streamer and CEO of StreamerSquare! You can find me on Twitter and Twitch.


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