Privacy and personal data security is something everybody cares about.In this blog, I summarized some key tools to help you identify what information of you is exposed online and some tips to keep your information private.
An interesting site – Spokeo.com
Spokeo is a people search website that aggregates data from online and offline sources. Spokeo and similar services have been criticized because of the danger caused by listing the personal information and physical addresses of unwitting people openly online, and for profiting off the exploitation of personal data.
On spokeo.com, you can search by name, email, phone or home address. For example, let’s search for Bill Gates.
Spokeo will listed all the “Bill Gates” it found and you can further filter by information like states or ages. When you click into one profile, you can see all the details including current and historical address, contact information and even family members. Based on my research, 80% of the information is quite up to date and accurate.
Go and give yourself a try. You will be surprised.
Now I assume you are shocked and scared. Putting aside of the legitimacy of this data collection site, because even if they don’t run this business, some hackers are collecting it secretly and sell them on Deep Web anyways. What we can do is from now on, do better. Let’s see some tips to help your information as private as possible:
Rule NO. 1 — Always keep in mind, you are a target.
Security is an awareness. When you be aware everything you received could be a scam or phishing and your information and personal data are valuable even though you are “nobody”, you are half way successful. Why？With these precautions, you have much less chances of being the victim of a phishing scams or leaking personal data. Go here to read more about phishing.
Rule NO. 2 — Don’t overshare on social media.
When you post on social media about, for example, a birthday celebration with a location, the hackers are super happy. Now they know your date of birth and some address. I guess you wont really post your ID or phone number or credit card information intentionally, but be careful and don’t post accidentally. As once it’s posted, it’s there and could be impossible to take down.
Rule NO. 3 — Monitor your personal information online actively
I highly recommend this tool — google me on web. Me on the Web is a tool launched by Google that allows users to create e-mail alerts that will be sent as soon as the information is uncovered by Google’s search bot. Alerts also can be sent daily or weekly. You can set it to alert on your name, address, email and phone number. Here is the link to set it up, takes like 30 seconds. :) There are a few more tips recommended by Google.
A recent launch service from Google will also be of good help — you can now ask Google to remove your personal information from the internet. Here is the link to request.
These small habits really help. Follow me to read more about small security habits.