Don’t delete your period app. Here are other ways to protect your health data.

In early August, a Nebraskan woman was charged with helping her daughter abort a pregnancy after 20 weeks, which is illegal in the state. A key piece of evidence? Her Facebook messages.

Since the overturn of Roe v. Wade, there is growing concerns about how digital information will be used to prosecute abortions — and how this affects both abortion seekers and those who provide abortion care and support.

Host Anita Rao talks with Amanda Bennett, project manager at the Digital Defense Fund, and Kestrel, an abortion doula and member of the Mountain Area Abortion Doula Collective in Western North Carolina, about best practices for keeping personal information safe from hackers and third party surveillance. And Dr. Olivia Snow, a dominatrix and research fellow at the UCLA Center For Critical Internet Inquiry, talks about the lessons sex workers have to share about protection from digital surveillance.

Three Ways to Protect Your Privacy Online

1. Secure Your Communications

   1. Use an end-to-end encrypted messaging app, like Signal. End-to-end encryption prevents third parties from accessing data sent from one party to another.

2. Secure Your Device

   1. Make sure your phone, computer or other device has a PIN or password.
   2. Encrypt the device. This means any data entered into the device will be indecipherable without a password or other key.

3. Secure Your Browsing

   1. Use a secure web browser such as Tor or Brave. Secure browsing is *not* the same as incognito mode. Using a VPN also adds security.