“Every young person one day will be entitle automatically to change his or her name on reaching adulthood in order to disown youthful hijinks stored on their friend’s social media sites.”, predicted by Google CEO Eric Schmidt in an interview with the Wall Street Journal in 2010.
We will be surprised to see how much personal information we are posting online and giving details of our personal life on internet. In fact, if we see the social media sites like Face book, Twitter, Instagram, Flickr Photos, LinkedIn and etc, they give all the information about us of who our friends & family are, what are our interests, our relationship status, our professional history, the past and present history of ours, etc., . The photos we are tagged in the social media reveal of what we’ve done, where we were, our favourite vacation spots, etc. One can access all this digital data information in just one search of our name.
If we need to know about any one, just Google search their name and we will be able to get details of all their social network sites and connections by revealing their personal history. Chances are there that all this digital data can be taken out and could be used to cause problems in our personal day to day life, problems at the time of prospective marriage alliances, could be investigated by potential employers, mined by marketing firms, or even be used by cyber criminals for identity theft.
But, if we take precautions by few quick things, we can protect ourselves from the chaos.
Manage all your accounts
Find out all your social network sites, online services and smart phone apps – where you have your accounts. You can Google your full name, nick names and e-mail addresses to find out the forgotten accounts. Close the accounts and unsubscribe yourself from the services that are no longer in use. Try website like http://accountkiller.com/en/, http://deleteyouraccount.com/, and http://justdelete.me/ to delete your accounts and how-to’s.
For the social networks you are using, make sure that your posts and photos are not freely available to the public by changing the settings to private. Do not allow anyone to tag you in the photos. Share your photos only to your close friends. And always be cautious when you share your posts, photos or tweets.
Avoid being tracked
Every time you surf the web – even in the privacy of your home, your actions are constantly being tracked. When you are signed-in to your Google, Microsoft or face book, your searches are monitored by Google search and Bing to give tailor-made results. When the shopping websites are being surfed, they leave cookies on your system which are used to provide advertisements in your browsing.
Sign out from all your accounts before browsing websites or using search engines. Uninstall search tool bars that might have been installed. Check the extensions that the browser is running (see browser Help section to know more about extensions), and disable the ones that you don’t recognize. Try https://duckduckgo.com/ search engine that doesn’t track you. Install the DoNotTrackMe browser add-on (http://abine.com/index.html) that’s available for Chrome, Firefox, IE, Opera and Safari and also as an app for Android and iOS. This add-on blocks ad networks, social networks and data-collection companies from tracking your browsing. It also protects email address, phone and credit card from being used by companies on the web and on your mobile devices. Install the CCleaner from http://www.piriform.com/ to clear temporary files, cookies, browsing, download and form history to protect privacy and to make computer faster and secure.
Useful browser extensions
Disconnect: Blocks trackers from popular sites (Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Safari) HTTPS
Everywhere: Redirects to secure (HTTPS) versions of the sites where possible (Chrome, Firefox)
Adblock Plus: Blocks intrusive ads (Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Safari)
Sources: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/