You may have heard the proclamations of company executives and other experts who are “confidentiality is dead”, but the truth is that confidentiality is lawfully protected in the United States. Here are the most important things you can do right now to put your digital life in order and keep some semblance of privacy and sanity.
1. Protect your smartphone A typical smartphone contains a lot of confidential information that is vulnerable to loss, theft, and in some states, such as California, legalized search and arrest without a warrant if you have ever been arrested. It only takes one minute or less to add a 4-digit access code, and an automatic lock requires a code in a minute or two inactivity. Now that smartphones can reveal your geographic location, be careful when you enable this feature. Teens and young people are especially vulnerable if they do not recognize the risk of confidentiality.
2 Change all passwords Your digital life probably includes 20, 30 or even more passwords that require periodic changes. Swear to change their daily data privacy in January, and then again, say, the fourth of July, to commemorate our freedom and legal right to privacy. Make sure all your passwords are unique. If this is too overwhelming, use shared passwords only on sites that keep a minimum of your personal data.
3 Password hardening s. Many sites evaluate the strength of your password when entering it. The strong have at least eight characters corresponding to numbers, letters (both lower and upper case), and special characters (for example, $, #,%, and so on. D.). The trick is to make it strong and unique to you, but not so easy to guess. Avoid personal information such as your phone number, the names of children or pets, date of birth, or any “pattern” of numbers. One librarian, for example, bases passwords on calls to the libraries of his favorite books .-- Agony and Ecstasy for Citibank card site. The call number PS3537.T669A38 can be rebuilt as she finds out. Use a strong password for any site that stores your financial or personal data.
4. Password Management , Experts say NOT to write down your passwords, but who could remember dozens of long and strong passwords? What active surfer should do? One solution is to save encrypted reminders offline as well as on your smartphone. In the example above, the librarian could simply write “AE” next to Citibank’s contact information as a reminder that the password was derived from the ring number for her favorite book. Agony and Ecstasy Some web sites now allow you to configure and access these password hints at login. If you rather missed the fun and creativity, you can refer to sites that store and encrypt your passwords for you or for systems that use tokens, phobes and other schemes instead of passwords.
5. Do not disclose information on the Internet. What is your first pet's first name, first date, best friend, mother's maiden name, high school? This personal information need not be there in cyberspace with its infinite memory. Come up with creative answers that you will not forget. Your first pet's name? Sample Peto. Your best friend? Lada Gaga. Your school Boringhs.
6 Consider the security service One proprietary privacy service gets your attention by email, which lists your current and previous addresses, name and age along with your month of birth! For a fee, they will find and delete your personal data from sites that sell it, or they will fire you. You can check how sensitive your personal information is by entering your name and address into Google or by entering your name and email address in Repression.com.
7 Update Privacy Settings Yes, we should read the site’s privacy policy, but who does? Fortunately, there are new services, software and settings that help ensure privacy. After configuring the privacy settings of your browser, it is important to check the privacy settings of your sites on social networks. Ignore these settings at your own risk - your date of birth can be disclosed if you do not protect your privacy, because social networking sites benefit from the fact that members are more socially no more private. To address growing concerns about social media privacy, try social media privacy services such as uProtect.it so that your messages, updates and photos are closed and under your control. Be sure to do this for your social networking site.
8. Check your credit report online Most likely, you already know that your confidentiality regarding the loan has been violated, and your identity has been stolen, but it is not bad to check your credit report once a year. The three major credit bureaus — Equifax, Experian, and Transunion — offer various monitoring plans that charge a monthly fee to track and report all changes in your report as they arise.
9. Install antispyware software The term "cookies" sounds so attractive, but make no mistake, cookies are a form of spyware that can invade your privacy every time you visit a website, and even control the use of your computer when working offline. Admittedly, most cookies consist of good quality code that companies use to serve you better and improve your web experience on their sites. However, to avoid malicious spyware, install a browser to clear all cookies when you close and use anti-spyware software to find and remove these small programs that accumulate on your hard drive and slow down your system over time. Find popular solutions on Symantec.com and McAfee.com.
10. Do not give up your privacy. Delete any personal information stored on your computer before disposing of it using the erase utility, which overwrites the hard drive. Tear or destroy credit card receipts, pre-approved credit offers and other financial documents before throwing them away. Before you enter these old tax reports in the trash after three years, make sure that your social security number is not printed on old medical and insurance reports (many companies used the SSN as an identity card), old stubs and other accounts. If your bank and credit account numbers remain the same, you will also need to destroy these old statements.
There you can do more, but this is a good start to the new year in a country where correctly confidentiality is protected by law.
