Dead Winter's Night - How to Maintain Your Privacy Online

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HOW TO MAINTAIN YOUR PRIVACY ONLINE

More people, especially young people, put too much personal details online. This mostly occurs on social networking sites such as My Space, Facebook, and Bebo, but it can also be done on personal web domains as well. This can be dangerous as it increases the risk of having your identity stolen by others for various nefarious reasons, including fraud, or could even put you in physical danger. You may think that what you do online is anonymous, but if you put too many personal details on to these sites it is not.

Ways to maintain your privacy:

1. Try to use a nickname wherever possible on all sites that you sign up to – if you chose to use your real name, then only use part of it, for example, your first or middle name, rather than using your full name.

2. Try to use different passwords for all of your accounts so that, if by chance, someone is able to hack into one of them, they are only able to cause trouble with that account, rather than all of them! Also, if you suspect that one of your accounts has been tampered with, then it’s a good idea to change all the passwords to your other accounts as a precaution to prevent them being hacked into.

3. Try to use all security options that sites, especially social networking sites have in place to protect people’s identity. This not only stops people from accessing information you don’t want them to have, but it also prevents you from getting spam.

4. On social networking sites, be picky about people you accept has friends – if it seems like they don’t have interests in common with you, then ask yourself why do they want to be your friend?

5. Don’t add applications, widgets, etc that you don’t trust – they are often a way of harvesting personal information about you, and your friends on social networking sites, and may also contain viruses that could harm your account or computer.

6. Keep separate e-mail addresses – one for your hobbies (i.e. forums, My Space, fan sites, etc) and one for business (online shopping, banking, jobs, and university/college). That way you can keep your important personal details safe if your recreational accounts get hacked into.

7. Try to avoid mixing personal details with the stuff you do for recreation while online. Your “online” friends only really want to know about your interests, and discuss those. It’s ok to tell them what you are doing at the moment, i.e. what job you’re doing, or the course you’re taking at college or university, but keep the details ambiguous – all you really need to say is that, for example, you’re a dog groomer or that you’re studying Zoology – there’s no need to tell everyone the address of your work place or what modules you are doing in your course. Also, it’s a good idea not to list your qualifications on your personal website and what grades you got – all this does is give people a list of things to put on a CV if they want to impersonate you! If you want to tell your “online” friends where you live, then just keep it to what country you live in and what city. If you live in a small place (for example Hethersage in Derbyshire), just mention the county or largest population centre nearest to where you live.

8. Only give out your e-mail address to people you trust and avoid allowing it being displayed on fan listings, etc. On forums and social networking sites that you’ve joined, make sure that it’s hidden from public view. This prevents people from misusing your e-mail and stops most spam. On a website that you run, where you probably need the e-mail address displayed, it’s best to embed an image with your e-mail on.

9. Only share photos of yourself with people that you trust (i.e. those that know you in real life). But if that’s the case, then why are you wasting time messing around on the internet chatting with them when you could be hanging out at the cinema, or something?

The point is, is that if you share too much personal information on the internet, you might as well just give out your address, National Insurance number, Driving Licence, Passport, bank and credit card details along with it, because fraudsters already know almost everything there is to know about you, and it won’t take much for them to get the information you haven’t told them. As I’ve stressed before, there is also a personal safety issue involved, not just for you, but for people you know in real life, so be cautious about how much information you share about yourself.