How To Keep Your Data Private?
Keeping Data Private = Secure Data
Keeping one’s data private and secure is more critical now than ever before in this data-driven, mobile-first, omnipresent Internet world. Cybercriminals would love to get their hands on a consumer’s data in order to siphon funds out of financial accounts and to sell the data itself on the black market for high prices. Data is essential for people to access those aforementioned financial accounts, along with other sites such as social media accounts, work accounts, email accounts, and more. Learn how to keep one’s data private below.
Why Keeping Your Data Private Is So Important?
As was mentioned above, a cybercriminal that gets access to a person’s data can usually get access to one’s financial accounts, including bank and PayPal accounts. Money can be lost out of these accounts and be difficult to recover. Additionally, identity theft can occur because a criminal with access to one’s data could have access to one’s Social Security Number, credit card information, security question answers, and more. The criminal could create fake credit cards or lines of credit in one’s name and charge high amounts to those fake accounts, leaving the consumer to pay off those debts. Thus, it is critical to keep one’s data secure and private at all times.
Ways To Keep Your Data Private And Secure
A mistake many Internet users make is creating weak passwords to accounts requiring logins, including to bank and credit card accounts, PayPal accounts, and more. Some Internet users will create ridiculously easy passwords such as “123456” or “abcdef” just because they’re easy to remember and easy to type. Unfortunately, a cybercriminal won’t have to expend much energy or effort to break these passwords and get access to one’s data, funds, and more.
Creating strong passwords is key to keeping one’s data safe and secure. There are many software programs and apps that can help to make strong passwords, ones that are long, hard to guess, and use many different types of characters, including letters, numbers, and special characters (such as ! and @). Such programs and apps can also make it easy to enter these hard-to-remember passwords; a password manager program or app can allow a person to remember just one hard password and get access to all his/her other passwords to all his/her accounts and be able to enter them easily into sites and apps for easy access, but make access extremely difficult for the cybercriminal, so much so that the cybercriminal will look for an easier target to steal from.
It’s also vital that one changes his/her passwords often; some sites (like bank sites) will require a person to change his/her password periodically, but other sites don’t. Still, it’s a good idea to change passwords regularly for all sites to add an extra layer of security so cybercriminals can’t access one’s data.
Many sites now provide two-factor authentication security to ensure only an authentic user gains access. Two-factor authentication involves entering in one’s regular password, but then also having to enter another code that he/she gets on his/her mobile device (usually smartphone), sent via a text message. This way, if a cybercriminal has learned the password, unless that criminal has the mobile phone and gets the text message with the code, the criminal will not be able to gain access to the account. Two-factor authentication is usually optional on most sites; it would be wise to consider using it on sites where it is available to better secure one’s data from cybercriminals.
One should never submit public information when using public Wi-Fi, especially if he/she is not on a virtual private network (VPN) that encrypts the data. Most public Wi-Fi networks are not secure; anyone with basic networking knowledge can intercept the data one submits on a public Wi-Fi network. In addition, it’s vital a person knows exactly what the public Wi-Fi network’s name actually is; many cybercriminals will create public Wi-Fi networks that sound similar to the real Wi-Fi network so that consumers will log onto these “fake” networks and submit sensitive information on them. Once that’s done, the cybercriminal has access to that information. The cybercriminal can also put malware, keystroke loggers, and other malicious files on the computers and mobile devices that connect to these fake Wi-Fi networks.
It’s important to shut down Bluetooth and other online services when not in use. Vulnerabilities in such services can lead to access to one’s computer or mobile device, including the files and information on them.
When one is browsing online, consider browsing in ‘private mode’ (‘Incognito Mode’ in Google Chrome). This prevents a record of one’s browsing activity from being recorded and prevents browser cookies from tracking what the person is doing and where he/she is going online. This can help to protect from cyberattacks, as well as prevent companies from learning more about a person and tailoring ads based on one’s preferences.
Protecting one’s data is more critical than ever in this data-driven, mobile-first, omnipresent Internet world. A person’s data is key to accessing financial, email, and social media services. A cybercriminal can cause much havoc, including financial and personal damage, if he/she gets possession of one’s personal data. By following the information above, a person’s personal data is likelier to remain private and secure from cybercriminals and from companies too.