Most Websites Already Know a Lot About You. Here’s What You Need to Know About Online Privacy.
Information that you share on an online platform can often be used by third parties without your consent, and it can even be used to track your whereabouts. Now, most of the secure sites will not collect any sensitive information like identification details or financial details. However, your posts on social media, internet searches, and browser history can be accessed, and your computer’s IP address can be used to trace your location as well.
Therefore, you should always be aware of all the privacy protocols that a site has before entering any information. Given below are a few tips that will help you keep your information safe when you are on the internet.
- Always update your browser. The web browser is the one thing that you use most often and your browser history can easily be accessed if there are any glitches. To avoid such disasters, it is important to run the available updates. These will check for any potential attacks and take measures to secure your information.
- Many online services like Gmail and Facebook have a two-step verification system. This provides extra protection as you will have two passwords instead of just one. When you sign in, you will have to enter your chosen password and a generated password will be sent to your mobile number. This reduces the risk of your account getting hacked.
- More often than not, you will notice that several advertisements are popping up and they are related to what you have browsed for. This is because these ads place cookies that can track and remember what you have searched. Now, you can remove the cookies by clearing your browser history at regular intervals.
- There are some online privacy tools available that help secures your information. These are not effective against massive attacks but they try to hide your cookies, location and browser history from third party websites.
- Whenever you are using a new site or creating an account on some online platform, make sure to read the terms and conditions they have regarding a client’s privacy, carefully. Most of the time, we miss this section, taking it for granted that our data is secure. But if you read between the lines you will see that many sites clearly state that they collect your information to sell to advertisers. Also, there are many companies that do not stick to their privacy policies and this places their clients in danger. If anything like this happens, then it becomes very difficult to maintain privacy and protect your personal data. So always keep yourself informed and give your information only if you are absolutely sure.
There are many internet browsers that allow “private browsing”. However, this does not mean that your information cannot be tracked or collected. When you use this mode, cache, browsing history and cookies are deleted, so your privacy is protected but only for those who use that same device.