Tech: Home Security with Virtual Apt

Bryan Colin, The Founder of VirtualApt offers all of us some tips for keeping home just a little more private.

The large majority of people are not taking the extreme precautions to prevent access to their life. We have all accepted that if someone really wants to see/hear/read about what’s going on, they prob- ably can.

There are some easy fixes to get past the unskilled stalker/snooper and these are easy and quick fixes.

1. Keep a password on your smartphone. Change it regularly. Yes it’s a pain in the ass, but this is the quickest and easiest way to invade your privacy from people that you know.

2. Have a current version of reputable anti-virus software on your devices.

3. Place a piece of tape over the camera of your laptop while you aren’t using it. It is too easy to open an attachment and not realize that you downloaded something that someone can watch you.

4. Two-factor authentication (2FA) adds the second level of security to prevent simple social hack- ing (which is the large majority).

5. Different passwords for different sites. Yes, it’s difficult to remember them all. Yes, they need to be long and not simple to guess. Part of the motivation of starting VirtualAPT was the realization that the “Open House” experience would be terrifying to me. Knowing that there are 40 strangers roaming around with nothing more than a signup sheet would prevent me from engaging in this activity. Realizing I’m not the only one who would prefer privacy, we created a way to build robots to exactly recreate the walkthrough tour that you would get if you went to the physical home. It will work on any device, anywhere in the world while getting the same sales pitch from the broker, from the comfort of my home or office; at least until I’m serious about buying. This saves time and effort from a customer standpoint, and addresses privacy concerns that people (should) have.

As published in our last issue, HOME, read full pdf here.virutalapt.com