Safer Internet Day was this week, and as we do every year, we like to use this event to highlight our commitment to protecting our clients’ privacy and keeping data secure.

Our way of helping is to highlight a few of the tools we employ to help protect ourselves in the wilderness that is the internet. This post won’t cover antivirus software, but we’ll be looking at the free tools we use to help prevent tracking and reduce (not eliminate) your vulnerability online.

• The first line of defense is an adblocker. These tools are designed to prevent you from seeing advertising online. We HIGHLY recommend that all of our clients and friends install one and keep it up to date. Our preferred adblocker is Ublock origin, which is available for Chrome here, and Firefox here.
• Here’s another reason to install this RIGHT NOW: once you’ve visited our website, our advertising will take over your devices for the next three months if you’re signed in to chrome. While we make it extremely easy to opt out of our advertising, most people don’t realize that you have to visit our privacy policy page to disable this, and that it only works for our website. An adblocker will remove all of the ads from the internet, including ours!

• After this, we like to look at a pair of tools from the Electronic Frontier Foundation. This group is one of the strongest advocates for privacy and an open internet, and we support their work whenever possible. The first tool we recommend, especially for laptops or other computers that you travel with, is called HTTPS Everywhere (you can install it from that page). This tool helps force your connection to a website over a more secure connection, which can help protect your data and especially any login credentials that you use. It’s not perfect, but it’s better than nothing.

• The second tool by the EFF is called Privacy Badger. This tool blocks invisible trackers, including the ones that the big tech companies use to track you across the internet. Privacy comes at a price however, as you’ll quickly learn just how much the web relies on these tools – this one WILL break certain websites, especially those that are pulling services from multiple sources. However, it can be incredibly illuminating to see just how much you’re being tracked across the web.
• Finally, we recommend a VPN, especially when travelling, and ESPECIALLY when travelling internationally. A VPN (or Virtual Private Network) is a tool that allows you to create a secure connection to another server before going out on the wider internet. We recommend using a tool like this whenever you’re connected to a WiFi network you don’t control, as they will prevent the owner of the WiFi network from snooping on your connection. Of course, this merely shifts who you trust from the person running your local WiFi hotspot to the VPN provider you’ve chosen to work with. We recommend doing due diligence on any VPN provider you choose to work with. We’re not going to disclose the firm we’ve chosen for security reasons, but we will be more than happy to recommend a few if you contact us.

This year, we’re adding one new item to our recommendations. Facebook recently added a new ability for you to see and manage what data they collect about you when you’re not using Facebook. Here’s their guide to understanding this, and here’s their guide to deleting your off-platform activity.

Bob and I are about to head out to the SRI Conference in Colorado Springs, and we both wanted to take this opportunity to discuss the state of our industry, and highlight an issue that’s become more and more prominent in the past few years: The way our colleagues are treated, both in general, and specifically at conferences.

First, some background: a few weeks ago, a fairly major figure in our industry made a number of morally reprehensible comments about women at a major financial services conference. In the wake of this event, major investors, including pension funds and others, have pulled almost 3 Billion dollars in assets out of his firm. This is the first time we’ve seen real consequences for behavior like this, and we hope that the industry will stand up and take notice.

But more needs to be done. Our friend Sonya Dreizler, who runs a consulting service for advisers that are trying to incorporate Sustainable, Responsible and Impact Investing into their practices, was at the conference in question, and has taken a leadership role to try to change our industry. We’ve been reading and following her “Do Better” series, where she’s been collecting stories from women in the financial services industry. These stories can be difficult to read, but we believe it’s important for us to confront the reality of the industry we work in.

Yesterday (as of this writing), Sonya put out a call on Linkedin:

We’re proud to answer this call. This blog is our firm’s public facing voice, and I can think of no better way to use our platform than to boost the stories that Sonya is telling. So I’ll stop now, and let her words speak for themselves:

In the wake of the #MeToo movement, we’ve seen many articles about why there are so few women in financial services, as well as surveys and statistics about sexual harassment and discrimination. While statistics and surveys are helpful for measuring the issue, I want to share real stories from real women about their experiences with sexual harassment and gender discrimination.

Please click here to visit her website and read the stories there. 

Sonya also gave a great keynote at last year’s SRI Conference where she touched on these topics. Here’s what she said on the topic:

I’m proud to serve with Sonya on the Advisory Board for the InvestmentNews ESG & Impact Forum. If you’re a financial professional, I hope you’ll join us there. We’re trying to make this an open and inclusive event.