How to protect your digital privacy from new Christmas presents

Jeff Bezos knows when you’ve been sleeping, he knows when you’re awake, he knows when you’ve been bad or good, because you didn’t change the default privacy settings on the Amazon smart speaker you set up in your bedroom, for goodness’ sake.

This Christmas, families will be unwrapping various internet-connected devices, and, knowingly or not, wiring up their homes for levels of surveillance rarely seen outside the Soviet bloc. But you still have a bit of control. Here are the best tips to protect your digital privacy, without resorting to Christmas gifts whittled from wood.

Don’t give up rights you don’t need to

When you set up an Echo (Amazon’s voice-controlled speaker), it will ask for your address book, to set up the Alexa voice-calling feature. If you, like everyone else in the world, have no intention of making phone calls from your Amazon Echo, don’t simply hand over your friends’ details to the company by blindly hitting “Yes”; instead, skip the prompt, and come back later if you change your mind. That goes for other technology, too. Look for boxes to uncheck, prompts to decline and settings to change; that will limit the technology to doing what you bought it for, rather than what the company that made it hopes you will let it do.

Dive into the settings

You wouldn’t walk into a restaurant and tell the waiter: “Just give me whatever’s got the highest profit margin, thanks.” So don’t just accept the default settings when you first turn on your smart humidifier. Take a second, or five, to look into the settings of your new devices, and see how much control they give you. You will almost certainly be able to put tighter controls on how your data is used (do you really want personalised adverts?) and you may find ways to improve the user experience as well.

Know when to give up

Some gifts aren’t salvageable. Your tech-obsessed brother may have thought the Fisher Price teddy bear with a camera in its nose was cute for your new baby, but, before the company fixed a breach, it allowed hackers to steal children’s names, birthdates and genders, along with other data. You would be best off pulling the batteries out and using it as a simple soft toy.