Privacy is becoming a rare phenomenon and no matter how much people try to keep their information secret the Internet seems to know a plenty about them. Banking transactions on the Internet are on the rise these days, thanks to online banking and we need to be very careful while using these portals to keep our information secure. Google, though claims to keep all our information a top secret but while accessing various sites and forums we get to see that our email address and phone numbers are already displayed. We also get calls from random people who vow themselves to be calling from certain organisations where they say that their got our contacts from such and such sites. But when you sit down and check your browsing history you find that you had never accessed that site in the recent past. Whenever we download an app from Google Play or Apple store, we tick the boxes approving Google and Apple in each case to get an access to our contacts, messages, pictures etc. We need to be more careful before giving such access to private information online.
A few steps which you can follow to improve online privacy are mentioned in the following discussion:
Don’t fill out your social media profile: The more information you furnish over the Internet, you are going to be more and more prone to get accessed by threats and online hackers who are waiting to gather whatever information you type in and use those to their advantage. In social media platforms, share your birthday, contact information, email address with only your “friends”. It is always safe not to even keep your posts and photographs in “public” mode so that anyone and everyone gets access to it.
Don’t share your social security number: Be very careful with whom you are sharing the last four digits of your social security number. It is safe if you are sharing it with your bank or any such related institution but if you are not certain about the source, then it is better not to share such personal details. If someone gets access to your birth date and address, then they can take up your identity and pile up credit against your name. Even if only the last four digits of your SSN is accessed, it is a lot easier to get the entire number by a technique known by such fraud people.
Turn on private browsing: “Private Browsing” is an important setting that you get in every major web browser. This will enable any other person with physical access to your device to not get a hold of your browsing history. Every company that advertises online knows what you are searching, from which sites you are shopping etc. With the help of such information, they target ads which will catch your interest. Fully featured vpn service will help you to hide your IP online and add additional layer of protection.
Set up Google alert: This is a simple technique to know if anything is being said about you online. You can just ask Google to look for the sites you search and ask it to send notifications to your email address. A google alert can thus be easily set up to know what is going on online.
