I'm not referring to what you do or don't wear in public. Here I'm talking about what personal data you expose online.
Take stock of your exposure
How many email accounts do you have? How many social networking accounts? How many media outlets do you subscribe to? These are things to take stock of.
Your risk of getting hacked
The more software services you have running on your computer (programs you have installed) that connect to the Internet, and the more accounts you have with various online entities, the greater your risk of getting hacked or exploited.
Why is this? Because it’s a numbers game – sooner or later one of the services you run or access will be hacked. Depending on what information you gave them, you may become a target on hacked data black market.
How to reduce your exposure?
My suggestions are as follows:
1. Give careful thought to whom you give your email and contact info. Imagine what would happen if they got hacked. What data would the hacker have of yours?
2. Uninstall any software on your computer you no longer use. Software programs are reaching more than ever out to servers for updates and other communication. These programs can be a beachhead into your computer if compromised.
3. Close online accounts of any sort that you no longer use. If you have an old email that you might occasionally need to reference, then at least suspend the service so no new mail comes in.
4. Use a strong spam filter for your email, and unsubscribe to any services you no longer use that show up on your spam list. (You can label anything that comes in as spam and sort it out when convenient.)
5. Use a unique password for EVERY SINGLE ONLINE ACCOUNT. If you share passwords between accounts and one account gets hacked, the bad guys and gals will try that password on any other accounts linked to you that they can locate. (You may like to read my July blog post about passwords.)
6. Pay attention to news reports related to any accounts you have—email, banking, social networking, etc.—and act promptly if their system has been compromised. Usually the most critical action to take is changing your password. Then start monitoring the account for unusual activity.
One last note: Parents, be nosy about what your kids are doing on their devices, and teach them about safety and security. They rely on us for such things in the offline world; we should help protect them online as well.
Thanks for reading!
Sam
