Some of you are still working from home due to COVID-19, and others, (like myself) have been still going to work on-site every day. I wanted to share a few basic online privacy hygiene tips that I use since most of us are spending more time online than we normally do.
Social Media
Be mindful of what you post. Examine the picture, would anything in the picture giveaway your location? If so, crop it out.
Do privacy check-ups- on a Facebook group I’m in we have someone volunteer to look at the other’s profile and report back what is visible to the public. This way you know what everyone who is not your friend can see and make adjustments in the privacy settings. Also, if you have pictures with anyone’s child/children always ask the parent/guardian if they are okay with you posting it on social media before you post.
Do this for all your Social media accounts.
Credit Cards
For online credit/debit card purchases I use Privacy.com.It allows you to generate virtual cards for online purchases and masks your real card number for online purchases. You can generate new card numbers for each purchase, and set limits on how much you want that virtual card to hold. I have found this very useful since I am doing more online shopping recently.
Password Managers
I use Keeper. This makes password management easy. You don’t have to enter all of your passwords at once, as you are browsing the password manager will prompt you when it does not have a password for the site you are entering and will help create a secure password to store in the vault. It will also tell you if a current password you are using for a site is a strong or weak password. This has helped me organize all of my passwords and convert my weaker passwords into much stronger ones. There are some free password managers out there: Bitwarden and LastPass are worth trying. My advice is to give them a try and then figure out which one you are more comfortable with using.
Try to not Feel Overwhelmed
There will be more privacy tips to come in later posts. When I started evaluating my online presence it seemed like a daunting task to get it where I felt comfortable, so I broke it down into smaller steps ( I am still working on it), but evaluating your social media presence, using a password manager, and being careful of your online shopping habits is a good place to start.
