Every day we give our information everywhere. According to a recent Rolling Stone issue (Sept ’10), Google has enough personal information on all of us to overthrow all of the governments of the world. It raises an interesting question: what can people really do with my personal information?
I know my information is never 'safe' online, but what should I pay attention to to be safe?
I know my name, email phone and address are ‘out there’. Obviously, otherwise I wouldn’t be inundated with contacts from marketers, wrong numbers and spam email.
But what can someone really do to me with this information? When I narrowed it down, I realized there are really 3 things that matter to me in terms of privacy.
1. I want to control which marketing messages I get. No waste. If you are gathering my information on the web, you better not be selling it, trading it or abusing it somehow.
2. I must monitor my credit, bank accounts and other pertinent information. If I see something out of the ordinary, I need to take responsibility for it, or contact authorities.
3. I should keep personal information, like my full name, address or kids pets and other loved ones off of the public social networking sites. People are weird sometimes!
sweet