There has been a recent debate running around the internet for the past few months, the topic: privacy. The topic seems to divide people into two major camps. Those that believe we live in public, or at least should live in public, and those that believe we live in private, and need to be very careful to keep it that way. Nether of these camps are completely correct. We live in twilight, a place where some of our information is public. If I perform a search on someone I know, I may, or may not get results about that person, and even if I do, it’s probably not everything about that person. With that being said, it is getting more, and more easy to find information about people. With that, there is a growing concern about what people know about you.
Many users went to Facebook because they believed it to be a safe place to put their sensitive data. However, with things such as Facebook changing privacy settings, many privacy conscious people have begun to worry about their privacy. Because of this, I have decided to make a simple list of rules that you can follow in order to stay private.
- Don’t give out too much personally identifiable information.
- Your phone number.
- The email address you use with secure services such as Paypal.
- Your Address
- Don’t give out any information about people you know who have not chosen to already give it to the world.
- Don’t expect that same curtsy in return.
- Don’t share anything with anybody that you don’t mind the entire world knowing.
- It may seem like you can trust them now, but people do change.
- Keep the security of your passwords up to date, using numbers, letters, and symbols.
- And make sure that every one is different.
- Remember that security and privacy is a moving target, so even if you are safe right now, it will not necessarily remain that way.
As Steve Gibson loves to say:
“Trust no one”
It may seem like I am saying that we should all stick our heads in the sand and kill our online profiles. I am not. Likewise, I am not saying that everything is going to be public, and that we should just give up. What I am saying, is that anything you put online is going to be public, and so be prepared to deal with it. Also, if you are doing something in real life, be prepared for it to be put online. The only reason why I put the first item on the list, is because several sources use that information to identify you, and as such, you don’t want people to be able to steal your identity while your not looking. The catch is, none of that information is new. For the past half-century, if not longer, humanity has had to look out for their reputation, nothing has changed, except for the technology.
The idea is to realize that when you put a picture on Facebook, or decide to go drunk tweeting, or post vile material, it’s going to get out. Even if all of the companies you post to keep your privacy settings, someone, somewhere, at some point in time, will make a copy, and will show it. With that being said, it may not happen to you. After all, we can only see the examples of this happening when it happens, but it still happens enough, so should be treated like it will happen.
The moral of this post, don’t be paranoid, but by the same token, don’t be reckless.
