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How to Protect Your Privacy Online

A lot has been said about your privacy online. More and more people are getting victims of phishers, scammers and identity thieves in a range of privacy violations from getting embarrassing status updates put up on their social networking sites, to downright criminal acts like unauthorized use of credit cards and money getting stolen from the victims’ Paypal accounts or online bank accounts.

Here are the top 5 ways to protect your privacy online.

1. It is not limited to social media networks.
When talking about online privacy, social media sites like Facebook and MySpace immediately come to mind. While they are the most prevalent sites that identity thefts and other cyber criminals use to carry out their crimes, they are not the ONLY sites. You could get in trouble using e-mail, backing up your files online, or even through searching.

This is not to say that you should go lax with your privacy on social media sites, it is just the opposite: you should safeguard the personal information you have on your social media sites because they could be used for other sites as well.

To do this, you should use the site’s privacy option, which effectively makes your profiles invisible to people who are outside your contacts list. You be careful on adding people to your contacts list as well. If a stranger asks you to add him or her to your contacts list, think very carefully before you click that approve button.

Further, you should not post private information online, or information that would tell people where you would be at a particular day and time. Nor should you post pictures, blogs, and other content that may be deemed offensive, racist or reveals too much about you or your life that it could be used against you at some later time.

Lastly, do not share personal information online. This includes that of your friends. There may be sites that ask you to refer a page to a friend, and if you like their page, chances are you will input not only your name and contact details, but your friends’ as well. When asked to sign up with your e-mail address, you might want to create a new one for use on these sites, protecting your primary e-mail address.

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Privacy Risks with Social Networking Sites

Most of us are under the impression that social networking sites are safe havens for our thoughts, feelings and just about anything that we want to share with our friends, family and contacts. However, one must not forget that whatever you put online is up for the whole world to see, not just your close friends, family or coworker.

As such, we have seen “scandal” photos taken off people’s MySpace, Facebook and other social networking accounts circulating in the Internet.

Your best bet, of course, would be to be prudent about what information you make available online. Before you post photographs or blog posts, make sure that it is something that you are comfortable having your mother, spiritual adviser or boss read through your blog post or seeing these photos. If you do not think they will approve, better not post them.

This goes for relatively tame personal information. If you are planning a party, you might think that posting the details on MySpace is the easiest way to get the word out. You might indicate the time of the party and your home address in the invites.

On the day of your party, people you do not know show up at your doorstep or someone might obtain that address for other reasons. Make sure that you do not post personal information, such as your home address, mobile number, where you work, where you are going to be, online. This would only help strangers find you.

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IPhone OS 3.0

iPhone has touted it as the next generation of the world’s most advanced operating system. On March 17, Apple gave the world a preview of the iPhone 3.0 OS.

The new OS promises to bring 100 new features to iPhones worldwide, including the following:

- the ability to search or “spotlight” the whole phone
- cut, copy and paste functions, even between apps
-you can also send photos, contacts, audio files and location via multimedia messaging
- read and compose SMS and e-mail in landscape orientation

All these are just the official ones. Unsurprisingly, various blogs and tech journals have come out with their own versions of what features would be included in the new 100 list. Some are unimaginative, while others say that the new iPhone 3.0 would enable you to use your iPhone to predict when the Second Coming would take place.

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Yahoo! Briefcase

So goes the e-mail I got from the good guys at Yahoo. I have a little less than two weeks to log on and retrieve my files. After the closing day on March 30, 2009, I will no longer be able to get the files I have there.

Yahoo did not say why it was closing the file storage service in its e-mail, but with all the problems that Yahoo has been experiencing in the past few months, I have to say it is because they are losing money and would rather concentrate on their core business. Which is, which is… hmmmn… what IS Yahoo’s core business, anyway? Officially, however, Yahoo maintains that “users have outgrown the service” especially when you got unlimited e-mail storage via Yahoo Mail as well as media sharing sites like Flickr.

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