Online Privacy Leaks – How to Avoid Personal Information Exposure?

Selfies, Location check-ins, and photo-tagging have taken the world by storm as people are going beyond the limits to showcase their extraordinary experiences. By the year 2017, there were as much as 2.46 billion users worldwide on social media as per statistica. Applications like Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat are some of the major social networking platforms that let people share videos and pictures like never before.

However, with such massive content flowing over the internet, the chances of involuntary data leaks become quite high. Hackers having sharp attacking techniques find it quite lucrative to get into the personal lives of people and break out publicly. Not just ordinary internet users like you and me, renowned celebrities have been victims of online privacy leaks too.

So, if you’re concerned about your private information and do not want it to be leaked, here are some useful tips to prevent privacy leaks:

Use Security for All your Accounts

Your email, your Facebook profile, your twitter account and all such accounts contain crucial information which you might not realize in the day to day life. Information about your family members, conversations, photographs and your personal details like name, address, date of birth and what not, all of this information could be easily hacked if your accounts are not safe. Therefore,

• Always use a double layer of security, such as two-factor authentication in WhatsApp, to ensure safety
• Use hard to guess or phrases for passwords that are easy for you to remember but difficult for hackers to crack

Backup your Files and Photos

To make sure that your important photos and files are not lost, you can use backup services available on the cloud. But, your cloud services credentials could easily be hacked or cracked by hackers and therefore having offline backup seems to be a more reliable solution. 

Install Mobile Apps Carefully

In a rush to get something done easily, often mobile users end up downloading rogue apps that cause harm to their mobile data and privacy. The best way to know if an app is useful for you or not is to:

• Read the user reviews of the app
• Read terms and conditions to know the access rights of the app

Use Mobile Security Features

No matter how careful you are, the chances of leaving your phone in a cafe or dropping it off in the market. When this happens, mobile security features can be a lot useful as mentioned below:

• Lock your phone with a strong password or phrase
• Activate tracking feature on your phone to locate it when lost
• Wiping your phone’s data to prevent unauthorized access

Download a Mobile Security App

While your phone’s in-built security features are helpful, downloading a mobile security antivirus software for Android can further enhance the safety of your data. Not only it will prevent the entry of malware, but will also warn you whenever there’s an unrecognized activity on your phone.

Turn on Safe Browsing

It is important to remember that you are being monitored every single seconds. The online websites that you browse use web cookies to fetch your information like searches, saved credentials, etc. You can prevent this from happening by using safe browsing which provides protection from cookies and phishing scams. Learn more here – Browse in a Private Environment Securely-Safe Browsing

Set up Google Alert

Want to know what’s being said about you on the web? Set up a google alert with your name so that every time there’s an activity that relates to your name, you will get notified.

Stay Safe from privacy leaks!