5 Effective Ways to Keep Your Information Private Online

Identity theft is becoming more and more common, with thieves using information that they can find with shocking ease.

In today's guest post, we're sharing ways to help protect your identity as you navigate the online world.

Image Credit: Jonas Leupe from Unsplash.

These days, more and more people are on social media. Most of them will share most facets of their lives, which can often be to their detriment. While you will still be online in various ways, you’ll want to keep your information private. That’s natural, and you’re far from the only one who wants that.

It can often be more complicated than you’d want, though, especially with cookies and other tracking technology. These can all collect more information than you’re comfortable with, but there are ways around this. All you might need are the right strategies.

By implementing them, you can stay as online as you were without needing to worry about your information being seen. Five of these could be more practical and effective than you’d think.

Keep Your Information Private: 5 Effective Strategies

1. Don’t Overshare Online

Quite a few people overshare on social media and in various other places, with a lot of this because they want to try to be influencers. This leads to quite a few risks, as countless strangers could find out a lot about you. They could use the information you share to find out even more about you.

Avoid oversharing online so you don’t run into this. Setting your online profiles to private is also recommended whenever you can do it. It should keep your information private quite well, and you shouldn’t have much to worry about once you do. It’s a quick and effective step to take.

2. Anti-Theft Your Devices

It’s not uncommon for people to lose their phones. While this is always a bad thing because of how valuable your phone is, you also need to worry about everything that’s on it. Put effort into making sure anyone that isn’t you can’t access your phone without you knowing about it.

A password is a great option to take with this, but you can always go a few steps forward. Some smartphones let you use your face or a fingerprint to access it, which can always be much more secure than a password. It could be better worth going with this.

3. Turn Off Phone Tracking

Phones often come with tracking technology built into them. This is great if you lose your phone and need to find it again. In most other cases, however, it could be a bit of a risk. If your phone is hacked, for example, people could find out exactly where you are without much effort.

That’s always worth avoiding, which is why you should turn off tracking on iPhone and android devices. It’ll make you much more safe in real life, and it could even prevent advertisers from knowing too much about your geographic location.

4. Pay Attention To App Permissions

Apps will ask for various permissions after you install them, and you could have to agree to these before you can use them. Since most people automatically agree to these, they often don’t know what they’re actually agreeing to. App publishers sometimes take advantage of that, and ask for permission for things you mightn’t like.

Pay attention to whatever permissions a particular app is looking for. If it’s anything you’re uncomfortable with or you consider too private, it mightn’t be worth using that app. Try to use it without agreeing to these permissions, and give it a skip if you can’t.

5. Confirm Website Security

You’ll naturally believe that all of the websites you’ll visit will be secure, but that isn’t the case. Some actually put time and effort into making sure that’s the case. Others, however, don’t really do anything for their security. These are the ones you’ll need to watch out for, as they could expose you to threats.

Thankfully, it’s relatively easy to check a website’s security, even before you click on it. Make sure the URL starts with https rather than http. While this seems like a minor difference, it’s more than you’d think. The first is a secure website, while the second isn’t.

Keep Your Information Private: Wrapping Up

Trying to keep your information private online can often seem complicated. With the various technologies that track you and your information as you browse the web, this can often be difficult. While you mightn’t be able to change some things, there are more than a few things you can do about others.

By using the right strategies, you’ll end up keeping more information private than you would’ve expected. All it takes is a little bit of effort, and you’ll end up with much less to worry about.

We want to hear from you!
What have you seen people do online that may expose their own identity to theft?