For Activists, Tips on Safe Use of Social Media

FROM Cairo to Madison, Wis., much has been made about the positive role technology has played in helping galvanize and organize populist movements.

The downside? Like the dreaded telescreen in George Orwell’s “1984,” technologies like the Internet and cellphones are proving just as useful for spying as they are for communicating, making the choice to hit “call” or “send” an increasingly risky one.

But several groups of free information advocates have emerged to help educate the latest generation of activists. To that end, one such group, Access, just released its guide to maintaining online and mobile phone security, with versions in Arabic and English.

Brett Solomon, the executive director of Access, said that the guide was created in part from recognition that people often lose sight of security concerns amid the collective euphoria that can accompany swift, large-scale democratization movements like the ones in Egypt and Tunisia. “The eye gets focused on the goal and not the process,” he said, “and during that time, they put their own personal security and their network security at risk.”

But it’s not just the fog of enthusiasm that renders people vulnerable; it’s lack of experience. “There’s actually a whole new group of people who have emerged from being citizens to becoming activists, some of them reluctantly,” Mr. Solomon said. “They’re not necessarily aware of the dangers that are associated with being active online.”

Those dangers have become increasingly apparent in recent months.

Facebook accounts were hacked in Tunisia. In Egypt, authorities shut down the Internet and cellphones, and employed technology that turned mobile phones into furtive listening devices, according to the guide.

The Access guide provides tips for keeping communications safer in such a climate. It recommends Gmail, for example, because it uses a secure connection by default, known as HTTPS, like at banking Web sites; Hotmail provides HTTPS as an option, and Facebook began offering it in January. The guide also explains how to disguise browsing histories and how to gain access to banned sites.

Security isn’t just a concern in Middle East autocracies, or for would-be revolutionaries. Mobile phone surveillance, for example, is tough to escape for cellphone users anywhere, said Ethan Zuckerman, senior researcher at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, and a founder of Global Voices, a worldwide group of bloggers and interpreters that has produced similarly themed guides.

Mr. Zuckerman regularly advises Access, as do Chris Hughes, one of Facebook’s founders; the rock musician Peter Gabriel, and the MoveOn.org board president Eli Pariser.

“In general, most users aren’t aware of the extent to which mobile phones can be monitored by telcos in cooperation with governments,” Mr. Zuckerman said, referring to telecommunications companies.

“If the guide reminds people that mobile phones are inherently insecure and that we’re trading off privacy and convenience in using the devices, it would be a useful outcome from the work,” he said.