Managing your online privacy is harder than you think. It's designed to be that way with every tech company, large or small, using your details and personal data as a profit mechanism. That's probably never going to stop so it's up to us to figure out how to limit what we give away.
There is also the actual "danger" factor where someone can find their way into a service and access the data that's stored there. It might be as mundane as your email address and Twitter user name, but it could also be passwords or financial information.
Either way, it's usually up to you to sort out your personal aftermath. More importantly, it's up to you to do whatever you can to keep things tidy and know when you have to take action.
That's a terrible solution. I enjoy cruising through the internet, and reading about cybersecurity and information security issues because I'm wired goofy like that. There are plenty of other people like me and even folks who are actually good at it who discover and help fix issues when they happen.
You are probably not one of those folks. It's OK to admit that you don't enjoy auditing all your accounts or checking forums to see which company was hacked this week. It's overwhelming so you probably need some help. That's where Jumbo comes into the picture.
What you need to know
There are two things to know about Jumbo right up front — if you are interested in security and privacy enough to understand everything the app does you probably don't need it. It wasn't built for you or me.
The second is that everyone else would benefit from using Jumbo, but it's a complicated app filled with all sorts of options and settings. Enough to make you want to give up even. But don't — once you take the time to read all the information that's presented you can work your way through it and come out a lot better off than you were before you installed it.
What does Jumbo do?
Jumbo does a lot. The core feature of the app is to scan your online accounts — Google, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, and more are fully supported — and find ways to make your identity safer and your footprint less visible. Even the most secure phone is no good without the right tools.
It does this by looking at tracking services, two-factor authentication and password safety, and monitoring for data breaches. The tools it offers to help you include ways to set up the two-factor authentication you should be using, setting up ad tracker blocking software, and cleaning up the things you have shared on social media.
Jumbo includes its own 2FA client software (think Google Authenticator or Microsoft Authenticator) and an internal VPN to block tracking and ads to make this possible. Once you go deeper into the settings you can also automatically archive social media posts while keeping a copy secured inside the app's vault.
There are other great features as well. Jumbo monitors and searches your details in online data breaches. The app will then alert you whenever a service you use is hacked and your details are exposed, and offer steps and tools to help you take appropriate action.
And since even the best app could never find everything wrong with the internet, Jumbo offers $25,000 in identity theft insurance once you set up everything and follow the app's best practices. For free.
Yes, free. Jumbo used to have an excellent way for users to pay what it's worth for premium features, even making them accessible to anyone in a pinch who contacted the developers. Life comes at you fast, you know?
Recent changes have allowed the team to offer all features for free to everyone. This is happening because the company is going to offer a corporate package, not because they want to start selling your data or have scaled back on the options.
Should you try it?
The only thing I didn't like about the app is how the included VPN can get slow, but that can happen with any VPN. Having said that, it didn't do a lot for me and didn't tell me anything I already didn't know. But I know how much time and effort I have spent searching out all that information and checking privacy settings myself — Jumbo will just do it for you.
All the data you send and receive is encrypted, and the company has an awesome privacy policy that's presented in two ways — the traditional way for the lawyers and nerds to sort through and a plain language version telling you what you share, what the company does with it all, and how it works while still minimizing data collection.
Yes, try it. It's free, and the company is very clear about handling your data. Once you have the time to follow through with all the settings and features, you will probably be glad you did it. And if it doesn't offer anything for you, that's cool too because you can just delete it and know your data isn't being sent off to a server and squirreled away forever.
Most of all, I will recommend Jumbo to anyone because of the company's core principles. They put it very succinctly right on their privacy policy page:
If you have any questions about our approach, please reach out to support@jumboprivacy.com. We’re always happy to talk about it because we believe this is the way personal data should always be treated.
We need more companies like this. You can find the Jumbo app on Google Play.
