The Ultimate Online Privacy Guide

Not everyone has had the opportunity to take the time and read a ton of information on online privacy, but I will explain what I know in detail to make things easier. Sometimes we all worry about our privacy being leaked somehow to the internet, but with a little care and measures taken you will never have to worry about something like that happening to you. Today I would like to go through some very important steps you should use to watch out for attacks and prevent them from happening.

Trusting with Social Media

I know in today’s society everyone likes to share their events with family and friends through social media, but the majority of the time most have total strangers also. You should make sure who you have as friends on these social media sites as sharing too much information can be a very common thing.
Did you know that most social media sites contain a GPS system for all your posts allowing people to see where you are posting from whether it is text or photos? Turning these sorts of features off is vital for your own personal safety and to help prevent any sort of privacy invasion.

Creating Complex Password

Using the internet means you will have multiple accounts floating around in cyber space. It is wise to have unique and complex passwords attached to these accounts especially if they are accounts that may contain very personal information such as bank statements or credit card numbers. If you are like me and have problems creating complex passwords on the fly, then you might want to check out generators online, or check out some really nice detail guides on how to transform an everyday password into something hard to crack.

Unsolicited Emails and Filtering

There have been many cases where people get scammed due to email phishing and fraudulent government mail. How email phishing works is frauds will attempt to contact you with an address that looks relatively similar to its official counterpart in order to fool the user into giving up important information. 

Try to stay away from any attachments that might be added with these types of email as they could be malware or system hostage bugs. Some of the information these scams usually request are:

• Home Addresses
• Full Names
• Medical ID Numbers
• Social Security Numbers

Disposing of Devices Correctly

Everyone has a few old devices lying around the house, phones, old beat up hard drives, and even tablets. These devices should be properly disposed of as they could contain vital information without you even knowing, even though it is a physical object it can affect your online life. Take the time to properly format drives and delete old contacts, if you have problems doing so you can look online for digital manuals that can guide you through the process.

Public Wi-Fi Use

It is now easier to find free public Wi-Fi than it is to get a free glass of water, but did you know these connections are extremely unreliable? Most Wi-Fi connections are not secured and can be hacked by a lurker attempting to steal someone's identity or banking information.
There are many hackers that use luring public network names to basically reel in people. Once connect to “Free Network” you are now going to get streamed and even stripped of all private information. A great way to make sure you don’t fall victim to these types of scams is to ask around to see if it is a legit connection. If at a café don’t be afraid to ask the waiters, as it could potentially bite you in the rear.

Virtual Private Networks

These are tools to mask the users from basically anything online, if connecting to a public Wi-Fi network you instantly become undetectable. It is highly recommended to activate a virtual private network when outbound, as it can protect your system from malware or human invasions. Getting into detail, what the program does is takes all the information that goes into and out of your system and scrambles it, using encryption software, making it unreadable to hackers.
This is also a great way to bypass restriction like country censorship and administrative blocks. When traveling, a virtual private network can be used for many purposes, and that is why it is high on my list of online security.

Anti-Virus

With people being more aware of what’s out there, the anti-virus market has risen and now is flooded with many mainstream brands. I will say that most anti-virus programs due offer their own unique look at online crime fighting. Taking the time to look through them all and research them would be your best bet as some might not be offering what you are looking for.
The good thing about anti-virus software is that you will always be warned if being attacked and will always be updated to fight against some of the more advanced malware and malicious website phishing schemes.
I hope you are able to put some of these protection methods into practice and keep yourself safe when surfing the web. Knowing what threats are out there and knowing how to disable them is the best thing anyone can learn as a computer user. Identity theft is a serious matter and with technology becoming easier to handle, I am afraid things will only get easier for criminals.

About The Author:

This guest post was contributed by Caroline on behalf of www.securethoughts.com, one of the best possible online sources for information regarding internet security. Caroline is a technology enthusiast and blogger who enjoys writing about technology and her main area of interest is internet security.