16 Tips to Protect Your Online Privacy

Whether you are an aspiring entrepreneur seeking to impress a potential client, or a newly minted college grad seeking a substantial professional position, it is vital that you take active steps to protect your reputation and safety by carefully ensuring that your online life stays private.

Here are some basic tips to help.

1. Use multiple passwords, and make them difficult to guess. Evidence suggests that 20 percent of people draw from a pool of roughly 2,000 passwords, making automatic hacking attempts a simple matter. Use a mix of upper and lower case letters, numbers, and symbols, and go for eight or more characters. For example, a teen-aged skateboarding female might use the password “sk8er*Gurl1″ — it is easy to remember, but uses symbols and numbers interspersed in the text, making it almost impossible to guess. Tip: Use a small number of hard-to-guess passwords for things like banking, and use a single, hard-to-guess generic password for sites that use them but about which you don’t much care. Do not write down your password in an easily discovered place, and never share your password with others.  Consider changing passwords every six months or so.
2. Be careful about using public computers. It may sound convenient to use that free library computer to check your account balance, but are you certainthat the person who used the machine yesterday didn’t install keylogging software that sends all your information to a file he will retrieve later?
3. Use fake email accounts and false names when using engaging in online activities where discretion is important. For example, if you participate in strongly political discussion groups, or sex and dating sites, do not use an online persona that can be traced back to you. That includes email addresses — its amazing what turns up when you search by email and not by name.
4. Do a Bing, Google, and Yahoo search of yourself every so often to see what turns up. If friends or family are referencing you in an unflattering way in a public blog, ask them to remove references. If there is material that could potentially be embarrassing but cannot be removed, then be prepared to explain the situation to those who may see it later.
5. Check the settings of social-networking profiles. For example, Facebook changed security settingsa few months ago, leaving subscribers with changes that were not well-communicated and which could potentially open sections of their profile to the world.  Make sure you know what Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace, YouTube, Flickr, and other sites share about you.
6. Maintain a solid wall of separation between personal and professional online activity.  Use different email addresses, logins, screen names, and photographs to reduce the odds that a search for a professional email address will turn up potentially embarrassing personal details.
7. Use discretion in online posting. Where possible, avoid full-name references, and remember that everything that is written online has the potential of being discoverable by others. This includes items that are potentially outside of your control, so check social sites occasionally to see who has tagged you in photos and notes, and remove any tags that could be problematic (like that photo your friend uploaded to Facebook, of you dancing naked on a bar while police officers try to put you in custody for disorderly behavior).
8. Maintain an up-to-date virus and malware scanner, and use the latest Web browsers.  The bad guys change tactics frequently, so keep abreast by being current on the latest anti-evildoer software.
9. Do not open attachments or click links sent by strangers.  This seems obvious, right? But take it a step further and don’t open attachments or click links from people you know, if the message itself seems odd — sometimes, the “from” line can be rewritten to match someone in your address book.  If it looks funky, find out more before clicking.
10. Always log out completely.  Don’t just shut down the Web browser.
11. Use secure HTTPS connections when available, in public places. A connection between your computer and the remote computer is only as secure as the computers in the middle. Wireless connections in public places are sometimes vulnerable to scanners that check wireless traffic and log it. A secure connection (the URL starts with HTTPS instead of HTTP) encrypts the data, providing an additional layer of security.
12. Don’t leave the back door open.  Storing a list of user names and passwords in an unlocked Blackberry or iPhone is a great way to be totally and irrevocably hacked if your smartphone is lost or stolen.  A security and privacy environment is only as secure as its weakest link.
13. Beware the cloud. The idea of “cloud storage” — free or low-cost online storage accessible from any computer — certainly has its charms. But be careful about putting sensitive information like tax data, erotic imagery, copies of legal documents, and related personal and financial information on a cloud server. All it takes is one nosy employee or security breach to expose all of that information to scammers and hackers.
14. Watch those USB keys!  It’s easy to put data on a USB thumb drive.  It’s even easier to forget about the data on that drive.  Make it a habit of only owning one or two and routinely secure-wiping the drive (not just deleting data, which could eventually be recovered with the right software).
15. Turn off Bluetooth. Don’t use Bluetooth unless you are using Bluetooth — keep the receiver off when not in use.
16. Conduct a security audit. Make sure your home wireless router is secure, and that file permissions on any remote servers (like your Web host) are properly set and blog engines are properly locked down. Find a knowledgeable friend to help, or hire a consultant to perform a security sweep. The smallest vulnerability can sometimes be the foot-in-the-door a hacker needs to gain access to your sensitive personal information.

Privacy and security aren’t a one-time activity, they are part of a larger philosophy about one’s use of the Internet. There is a growing unease among privacy experts that the amount of personal information that people put on the Web means that future privacy law may offer less protection in the online space. So protect yourself by keeping your private information private and keeping up a wall of separation between the personal and the professional.

Need a security audit?  Contact Gillikin Consulting for a no-obligation consultation!