Top 4 Tips to Protect Personal Details and Privacy Online

 1. While free WiFi when you are out-and-about is fantastically useful, make sure you never log in to anything private and personal, such as online banking or making online transactions. Gadgets are available to either ‘piggyback’ onto an existing network, or broadcast a signal from a computer, giving anyone the ability to view whatever you are doing on an open network. However, you can purchase VPN (Virtual Private Network) dongle. This gives your computer protection over public networks, allowing you to carry out any business you want without fear of identity theft.

2. Search Engines, particularly Google, are constantly pulling data about where you search, where you are from, what you buy and almost anything you carry out through their services. This has only gotten worse with Google accounts, Android phones and Chrome, as all these services make it easier for them to grab your data whenever you are using them. Have you ever wondered why the adverts that pop up when you are browsing sometimes seem oddly tailored to sites you visit regularly, or have visited recently? It’s because Google uses your browsing data to target the adverts you are shown. While it often is comparatively innocent use, it can still be nerve-racking giving that much of your personal data away, and being sold to unsolicited. Thankfully, using secured browsers and search engines can help reduce the chances of your data being pulled, https://duckduckgo.com/ is a great secure search engine.

3. If you have a lot of private digital documents we would highly recommend not storing them on your computer or a standard USB flash drive – if you misplace these, or they get stolen, you will lose all of your private data, which could then be picked up by people happy to exploit it. We would recommend an encrypted USB flash drive, which can be protected by password and data encrypted, menaning that your data will have thorough protection no matter what you do with your flash drive!

4. Though these days most people use password-protected router at home or work, many still don’t, and this is one of the easiest ways for opportunist criminals to access your private data and install spyware and viruses to your network. Even aside from the privacy risks, if people ‘piggyback’ on to your WiFi they may access illegal material (such as pirated media), which can come back on you as it is difficult to prove who has been using the network, or they could download excessive amounts of data, taking your over your monthly download limit and incurring charges. Password protected WiFi just makes sense all around.