Privacy Online or Off

Staying safe online or off is often a matter of keeping your personal information private. Below are a number of tips and tricks to protect your identity online and off. These simple tips can help keep you safe from theft, harrassment and fraud.

Use Passwords on all your computers:

Prevent others from using your computer in your home or office by setting up a logon that includes password protection. If you share a computer with another person, take steps to guard your privacy by password-protecting confidential files, moving them to a separate storage device, or encrypting them (see Encrypting Stored Data for details on how to do this under Windows and Macintosh OS X).

Be careful when giving your data away online:

Once you connect your computer or laptop to a network, you must deal with additional security and privacy concerns related to your ID, credit cards, bank accounts, and social security numbers, sensitive and confidential information, and online predators. For more information, check out articles these articles: Passwords, Spam, Phishing, Spyware, Online Hoaxes, Id Theft and Wireless.

Be aware of how your information is used:

When you make an online purchase with a credit card, you are trusting that the other party will take reasonable precautions to protect your credit card information. But there's no guarantee they won't deliberately share other personal information such as your name, e-mail address, and phone numbers with marketers, increasing the number of unwanted phone calls and spam mail that you receive. Check the privacy policy of any company that you do business with online. When you fill out a web form, read it carefully so that you know what you are agreeing to, and look for check boxes that you have to check or uncheck to avoid getting spammed. See the Shopping article for more information.

Always log off network sessions and close/quit programs:

Anytime you open a network session, always make sure to log off and close or quit any software programs you've used. This is especially true when you use your OSU Internet Username to access the Internet in a Student Computer Center, or when you're on a public-use computer such as those in libraries. Leaving an open session and open programs on a public computer gives the next user access to your personal e-mails and confidential information. A dishonest person could create all kinds of problems, including stealing your identity (see Identity Theft article). When reading e-mail on a shared or public computer, make sure to delete your messages, move them to a separate storage device, or password protect them. To ensure that none of your personal information remains in a web browser, try to use the Clear History and Remove Cookies commands if it permits them, (find them under Preferences/Advanced or in one of the other menus).

Webmail is not always secure:

Webmail offers a certain level of e-mail privacy when sharing a computer, because you can store your webmail in your account on the web site of the provider. Just be sure not to store your passwords in the web browser. Ohio State offers Webmail on the central e-mail system. Note however, that OSU's Webmail and POP mail services both access your incoming e-mail on the same server, so it's a good idea to familiarize yourself with the options available for storing mail on the server or downloading it to your computer or storage media. Read the 8help Knowledge Base article for a better understanding of the interactions.

Be aware that free e-mail service from providers like Yahoo!, Hotmail, and Google may compromise your privacy and security.

The U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team warns that although free e-mail service is convenient and accessible, you should never use any of them when dealing with confidential or sensitive information. Get full details in US-CERT's security tips article.

Know that e-mail is not really private:

Even taking all the precautions listed, don't assume that your e-mail will be read only by the intended recipients. Think of e-mail as you'd think of a postcard. No one writes confidential or sensitive information on a postcard, because it offers no privacy. E-mail is similar. Your messages sometime won't get to your intended recipients due to delivery problems or because of invalid addresses. And messages sent over a wireless network (see Wireless article) are essentially broadcast and can be intercepted. If you have sensitive information to share by e-mail, your best bet is to use encryption (see Encryption article) to both protect the contents of your message and to prove to the recipient that the message was sent by you.

The Internet remembers forever:

Keep in mind that anything that you post to a mailing list, chat room, or blog, or any public form you complete, can be archived, indexed, and potentially made available forever. So what's true for e-mail is also true for postings, as far as content and privacy are concerned. When posting on a public forum, like the social networking sites, consider all who may see the information now and later. See the Social Networking article for more information.