How to Protect Your Personal Information on the Internet if You Communicate on Social Networks

  

       The problem of preserving personal data on the Internet has become especially acute after an increase in cases of fraud, cyber harassment and intimidation of users. Having received personal information about a victim, an attacker can easily ruin her life or even undermine her material well-being. Therefore, it is extremely important to keep your personal data secret, hiding under numerous nicknames, numbers and neutral accounts to avoid trouble. However, due to the desire of many users to use social networks and dating sites, it is not possible to hide all information about yourself. How else to register on Odnoklassniki, if you do not indicate the name, surname and educational institutions? How to make an acquaintance with a girl/guy on the site without publishing a photo and ways of communication? No way.

       Unfortunately, we have to admit that the use of social networks like "classmates" and "VKontakte" is unsafe - precisely because of these very "personal data". According to them, in addition to old friends and acquaintances, you can be found by people with whom you do not crave at all. This cannot be avoided - by posting information about yourself on the Internet, you make it available to everyone, and not just to those for whom it was intended. Therefore, when registering on such resources, you need to be mentally prepared for unpleasant contacts, and not just looking for childhood friends. Among the "unpleasant" contact with those who obsessively offer their society in cyberspace (or in reality, finding you according to data from the social network) against your clearly expressed desire.

       Nevertheless, the "leakage" of personal information can be avoided, even by using the resources where it is obligatory to indicate it. For example, on sites that are not social networks and shops, it is quite possible to indicate a pseudonym instead of the real name and surname, or, if the interface allows it, leave these items of the questionnaire completely empty. On dating sites, you can indicate only electronic communication methods, for example, an e-mail or ICQ number specially allocated for such contacts. If the conversation on them turns out to be successful, nothing prevents you from later sharing with your interlocutor "more real" electronic coordinates, or even a phone number or address.

A "special" box is needed not only to protect against possible cyber harassment. By specifying an e-mail address in the public domain, you run the risk of getting into the spammers' database and daily receiving a lot of unnecessary and “hanging” mailings. Therefore, indicate the address registered in advance for communication on the site, which is not a pity to lose due to the flow of spam. Otherwise, you will have to register a new personal mailbox and report its address to all old contacts.

 

       When using a popular social network, you must upload personal photos and files only for “friends” access. Thus, only those people whom you personally approve will be able to see them. At the same time, it is important to be careful when choosing friends, not to accept all applications in a row for the number. The joy of having a large number of "friends" will quickly be overshadowed by trouble. Which ones? For example, you may fall prey to a malicious prankster who uses your data to organize cyber harassment. Your enemies can use your photos and contacts for posting on other resources, wherever you would not like to see them at all. Fraudsters, spammers, phishers, having received information about you, will certainly include it “in their turnover”.

Always try to leave a minimum of information about yourself, do not tell anything unnecessary, do not open access to your personal pages to strangers and communication on social networks will bring maximum pleasure and a minimum of problems.

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