Protecting your personal information online requires you to practice good security hygiene. There are some steps that make sense for almost all of us, such as using strong passwords, two-factor authentication and downloading the latest security updates. Below are best practices that all of us should put into place throughout the year:
Ensure Personal Identifiable Information (PII) is not available.
Personal Identifiable information includes current and former addresses, phone number(s), email addresses, family members’ names and contact information, voter records, employers, etc. Enlist services like DeleteMe to remove searchable information.
Protect your email account(s).
Use strong passwords or passphrases for your accounts. Longer than a password, passphrases should be strong and unique for each site. Don’t use 1234. Bring some randomness and special characters into it. And don’t use the same password for different websites: you don’t want all your accounts to be compromised just because one gets hacked. Best practice: use a password manager to keep track of your passwords.
Next, ensure your network is secure; be wary of public WiFi. Finally, be aware of phishing scams; real email addresses are often spoofed and look very legitimate. If you’re unsure, hover over the email address of the sender to verify it is correct. If you’re still not sure, call them to confirm.
Use social media privacy tools.
Review who can see your profile: is it public? Can someone find you through a search? Make sure you can approve followers and posts where you are tagged. Again, be sure to regularly change your password and review security settings several times a year. Search for yourself to ensure imposter accounts don’t exist and be sure to report inappropriate posts to the organization and to the support offered in the platform.
Delete some apps from your phone; use a web-browser instead.
Apps can learn a lot about you due to all the different types of data they can access via your phone. Seemingly harmless apps – like a flashlight app — could be selling the data they gather from you.
Take a look at your smartphone and delete all the apps you don’t really need. For many tasks, you can use a browser on your phone instead of an app. Privacy-wise, browsers are preferable, because they can’t access as much of your information as an app can.
Protect what matters most.
Depending on your situation, you might want to take additional precautions to safeguard your privacy and security.
To figure out what steps people should take to safeguard their stuff, Galperin suggests you make a security plan. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has a guide to doing this, which starts by asking yourself these questions:
- What do I want to protect?
- Whom do I want to protect it from?
- How bad are the consequences if I don’t?
- How likely is it to need protecting?
- And how much trouble am I willing to go through to try to protect it?
Start small and take it one step at a time.
Even just doing the basics — strengthening your passwords, turning on two-factor authentication and watching out for scammers — can make your accounts a lot more secure. Then keep going…there are a lot of other steps you might want to take, depending on your needs. We’re going to be on the Internet for a long time. The more each of us understands how our data is collected and used — and how to keep private what we want to keep private — the better, safer and healthier our digital lives will be.