OMG, TMI: Tips For Protecting Your Privacy Online

Beef up your passwords

Most of us loathe keeping track of complicated passwords and regularly changing them, so we end up using the same obvious phrases or number sequences (“1234”), with minor variations at best, across multiple platforms. The result is that any given account is easy to hack, and that provides the key for hacking into a lot of your other accounts. Password management software can help you keep track of more complex passwords, but it turns out that experts disagree about how elaborate the password needs to be. For most purposes, the basic principles are enough: Longer is better, come up with combinations of letters and numbers or symbols that are meaningful to you (but not obvious possibilities to hackers, such as your date of birth), and don’t use the same password on more than one account.

Pare down your profiles

Think about how you use social media and how much personal information you really need to disclose on Facebook, LinkedIn, or similar platforms. Do you need to post your age or engage in birthday notifications, which can provide identity thieves with valuable information, such as your date and place of birth? Do you need to make your entire resume widely available, which can then become a tool for social engineering attacks? Keep it bare-bones, if possible. Loose lips sink ships, and TMI can end up sharing your data with the wrong crowd.

Fine tune your privacy settings

When you post something online, do you have a clear idea of who’s reading it? Many Facebook and Twitter users don’t realize that, unless they adjust their privacy settings properly, they may be sending a so-called private message out to “friends” and followers they don’t even know.

Lock up your phone and laptop

It’s never a good idea to leave expensive hardware unattended, but the theft can have more far-reaching consequences if you left your data — including financial information — open to inspection. Using system password or fingerprint-ID functions to keep prying eyes from your personal data involves an extra step, but in many cases, it’s well worth taking.

No phishing

Most of us have learned, through bitter experience, not to click on email attachments or links sent to us by people we don’t know. But phishing scams have become more sophisticated, too; beware of ads and videos popping up on social media that can take you down the rabbit hole. Your best defense should include reliable virus and malware detection programs and a healthy skepticism of material coming your way from sources that might seem sort of familiar but really aren’t. And, of course, never provide any password by email to anyone.

Don’t overshare

Once it gets on the Internet, nothing that you disclose is truly private. The casual revelations you’re making to your vast social media audience are also grist for marketers, scammers, scam marketers, and criminals. Think twice about divulging your location to sites that don’t need it, and delay posting photos of your latest ocean cruise until you get home; the “real-time” fun of instant posting can also alert burglars to your conspicuous absence. Most of all, exercise caution about the online trail you leave that can provide an opening for financial scams and identity theft.