While revolutionary, the ease and convenience of disseminating information online also lurks some security threats. Many people have unknowingly engaged in risky online activities.
In fact, you might be making some serious security and privacy mistakes on the Internet right now. Find out below!
1. Revealing too much information on social media
For many people, social media plays a very important role. They can share their inner thoughts, post their daily experiences, or even create a completely different personality online. It’s a fun, satisfying form of self-expression.
While social sharing helps you find like-minded individuals, it also puts you at risk of identity theft. Your profile contains sensitive personally identifiable information (PII). Hackers can do significant damage with identifiers, such as race, gender, home address, contact number or date of birth.
You don’t have to stop using social media altogether – just filter your posts. Good practices like hiding your current location, turning off GPS, deleting your profile profile and posting less often will protect your social media accounts from hackers.
2. Open work software and files on personal devices
Like many remote workers, you can sometimes mix personal and company-issued devices. This is extremely common but very risky. Even seemingly innocuous actions like accessing Facebook on your work laptop or sending office documents via smartphone carry some cybersecurity risks.
Stop opening work files on your personal devices and vice versa. Smartphones or laptops don’t have complex security systems like those set up by the company. If a data breach occurs, you will be held responsible.
In addition, company-issued devices are regularly scanned by time tracking and employee monitoring tools. They take scheduled screenshots, track app usage, and share screen activity. You may not feel comfortable when your employer gets to know your personal issues better.
3. Unlimited data access
Data management is mainly based on file access control. Regulate who accesses your data and how they modify it to prevent data breaches. After all, cybersecurity threats like theft, account takeover, and accidental disclosure often stem from unauthorized access.
Although access control is extremely important, many people tend to ignore it. They are unaware of the severity of the account hijacking or are inconvenienced by the steps involved in setting up the permission restriction process.
As a rule of thumb, make your documents private by default. Get in the habit of adjusting user accessibility when sharing files, whether for work or personal purposes. Only grant access to authorized users.