Identity theft is a major issue, and has been increasing with alarming regularity in the past few years. Along with identity theft, there is also the possibility of someone also using your financial accounts to purchase items online. While it may be impossible to completely stop someone from getting at your information, there are several things that you can do to help protect yourself while online.
What You Can Do To Protect Yourself Online
- Only visit trusted websites. This is probably one of the most important points. If a website doesn’t look right, or you have a bad feeling about visiting such a site, then you should just close down the browser or leave the site. Web browsers are starting to warn its users when they visit a bad site, but they may not catch them all. It is important to only visit sites that you trust. Visiting untrusted sites may allow the site to install malware, or steal you personal information if you fill out a form.
- Buy items from reputable websites. This is an additional point to the first one, but it pertains to making purchases online. Many sites offer goods and services for sale, but if you don’t trust the site, find another trusting site with the same product for sale. The great thing about the Internet is that more than one site will usually have the same product/service so you do have options.
- Ensure encryption is enabled when providing personal information. When ordering online, make sure your web browser indicates that the web page is using SSL encryption to protect your data. A common indication for browsers to show that a web page is encrypted is by displaying a lock icon somewhere. Look up the indicator for your web browser so you understand what you need to look out for. If possible, you should also enable encryption for your e-mail and social networks. Facebook has the option to encrypt your session if you choose.
- Minimize how much information you provide. This point is more for those active in social networks. Only provide information online that you are comfortable with providing. If you don’t want to provide your phone number, for instance, then don’t provide it. This also goes for making purchases. I try to use PayPal as much as possible, that why I don’t need to share my credit card information to many online sites when I make a purchase. With PayPal, my information is in one location, and I would need to log into PayPal to complete the purchase. My credit card information is not shared to the site where I make my purchase.
- Use a different, long password for each site. It is important that you don’t use the same password for every site. If someone were to gain access to one of your accounts, then they would be able to gain access to other accounts that you use. Chances are you also use the same ID with different sites, so using the same password and ID on every site pretty much opens the door for abuse. If you have trouble remembering different passwords, then ready why I use LastPass to manage my passwords. In addition to strong a passwords, I also use YubiKey for two-factor authentication.
The above lists 5 points that you should think about to help you protect your identity while online. Do you have additional points that you can add to this list?