‘Trust your gut’: 3 tips for protecting yourself online as a journalist

After hearing from our journalist colleagues that they increasingly feel under threat online while doing their jobs, the National Press Club Journalism Institute convened a panel of experts to discuss digital safety tips for journalists.

María Salazar Ferro (The New York Times), Tat Bellamy-Walker (PEN America), and Greg Lipper (Lipper Law PLLC) offered tips on how journalists can protect themselves before digital harassment or abuse takes place.

Here’s a snippet of what they shared:

Trust your spidey senses: “If something feels off, something likely is off,” said María Salazar Ferro, director of newsroom safety and resilience at The New York Times. “If something does not feel right, please seek help. There are a lot of resources. Talk to your friend, talk to your editor, talk to whoever you need to talk to … But don’t let it sit. Trust your gut.”

Practice password hygiene: “Use long, complex passwords that are 16 or more characters and unique to each of your accounts,” said Tat Bellamy-Walker, program manager of digital safety training and resources (media) at PEN America. “The best bet is for you to use a password manager to save this information. And I would also say for you to enable two-factor authentication on as many devices as possible … There are three ways to do 2FA, but no matter what method you use, make sure you save your backup codes somewhere safe, just in case you lose your device or if it’s stolen.”

Use end-to-end encryption for reporting: “End-to-end encryption for communications, especially for messaging, is important,” said Greg Lipper, founder of Lipper Law PLLC, and an experienced defense attorney in D.C. “For a lot of people on the Apple side, the weak link is your backups. Because iMessage is end-to-end encrypted, Apple can’t give law enforcement a key to that, even if they wanted to. But by default, iCloud backups — which most people probably turn on to back up their phone and photos — are not end-to-end encrypted.

And so, you will often see in a criminal defense case a big, multi-1,000-page digest of your client’s entire internet history, which law enforcement got from Apple because of an iCloud backup. There is an option called Advanced Data Protection through Apple that you can turn on that will end-to-end encrypt your backups as well.”

Missed the webinar? That’s ok — you can watch the full video recording here: