The importance of safety no longer only pertains to our physical self. In today’s world of technology, we also need to keep ourselves safe online.
Everyday people have their identities stolen and put their lives in danger by sharing too much information on the web. But these issues can easily be avoided if you follow simple safety tips when using the Internet.
Here are a few ideas on how to keep your personal information personal online:
- Be overly private. You don’t need to be a friend to everyone on the Internet. Set the privacy and security settings on your various accounts to your comfort level for information sharing and review them periodically, because some sites change the options frequently. Limiting your information is safe. Make sure that your social media sites don’t give away the answers to the security questions you use for your online banking account, such as pet’s name, best friend, or city where you were born.
- Research before acting. Be wary and cautious about offers that sound too good to be true, requests for personal information, and sites that ask you to act immediately.
- Don’t click it. Cybercriminals can target you with emails that appear to come from companies you do business with or social media sites where you have accounts. Clicking links in these emails may take you to a site that is a clone of a legitimate site for the purpose of capturing your userID and password. If you receive such an email, it is always safer to avoid clicking a link in the email message, and instead go directly to the company web site to perform the needed task. Criminals may learn your “likes” from social media, and then create carefully targeted email attacks (called “spear phishing”).
- Things to keep to yourself. Keep your address, phone numbers, and credit card details to yourself.
- Make your passwords strong and long. Having symbols, numbers, uppercase, and lowercase letters can all help make a more secure password. More advice at How to Create Secure Passwords and Safe Passwords.
- New account=new password. If you have the same password for different accounts on the Internet, you make it simple for cybercriminals to access them all at once! Create a different password for each account you create.
- Make a list. Making a list of all your userIDs and passwords can help avoid a lot of hassle when you forget your unique passwords. But keep the list in a safe place.
Related article: Tips for Social Networking Safety
A good resource: staysafeonline.org
Thanks so much for this important reminder about online privacy!
May I add something that I find very important:
Stay anonymous whenever possible. Don’t use your real name whenever possible.
If you have a personal blog it might be a good idea to use your real name because … well … it’s a personal blog. But think before you blog. Don’t tell anything that you wouldn’t want a total stranger to know about yourself.
But if you participate in online discussions like forums or commentary sections of newspapers and similar stuff: Use an alias. There is no need for anybody to know that your real name is not Jon Doe. Don’t lie about it, be honest if asked and openly admit that you’re not using your real name.
Think about this: Everything you write on the Internet will supposedly stay there indefinitely. So your not so well thought through words from the days of your youth can hunt you down 40 years later. And you don’t know how the world will look in 40 years. Don’t ever take the freedom of speech you enjoy now for granted.
In addition to a strong password and using a different password on every website or service, you should also consider turning on 2-Factor Authentication for websites that support it.
Currently Google, Facebook, and Twitter all offer 2-Factor authentication that, in addition to a username and password, requires you to supply a numeric code that you get from your phone (through a smartphone app or by SMS text message). The numeric code changes constantly, so you have to have you phone to log in. (There are recovery options if you lose your phone or it breaks).
2 factor authentication makes it so that even if someone were to find out your username and password, they still wouldn’t be able to get into your account unless they also have you phone.
Also, if you are running a wordpress blog, there is a plugin to enable 2-Factor Auth using the Google Authenticator smartphone app.
Nice tips.. By these easy ways we can surely keep safe our personal information. After reading this post I must say follow some safety measures protect and keep safe. One of the safest security measures is to never use the same password twice. Thanks for this informational post.