SU Comments

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

I just had a stranger message me on Skype. Usually, I’ll talk to strangers who send me IMs. I’ve met some interesting people that way. This time, they were messaging to ask me a question. “Why does your age show 107?”

I answered honestly. “Because showing too much information makes it easy to find too much other information about people.”

Internet security is a subject I care about deeply. And, although keeping my computer safe requires finding and using the right programs, keeping my self safe is mostly a matter of being careful.

Even little things, like giving the wrong birthday or birth year can work great. To make it easy, I’ll often use matching numbers for the month and day, ie. 1/1, 2/2, 3/3, etc. The year can be anything, the only thing you may want to keep in mind is that many sites have an age limit (the original reason for asking ages in the first place) so you’ll probably want to select an age that puts you over 13 or 18 depending on the site’s requirements.

Another thing to be really careful about is giving away your address. A very, very simple rule of thumb is to only put your address on a page whose web address (in the address bar at the top of your browser) starts with https/ (the s tells you it’s a secure http connection). That means Google won’t be reading the page and showing all your information in a search. I’d still make sure it’s a site I trust. Even if Google’s bots can’t read the page, doesn’t mean that whoever owns the page can’t turn around and sell your information. It’s not very ethical, but it does happen.

One of the first things I was taught when I first started out on the world wide web, way back when, was not to use your real name for your e-mail address. Even though I was given that advice over 10 years ago now, it’s still very applicable today. Your e-mail gets posted all over the place, and you never know who is seeing it.

Another thing I would suggest concerning e-mail is to check what name your outgoing e-mail shows from. It’s very easy when you’re filling out the form to set up your e-mail to put your whole name in without thinking about it. Even computer professionals get caught with this one sometimes. If you ever reply to anyone who isn’t family or a good friend, it’s probably a good idea to change your name on there to a nickname or just your first or last name.

These are just a few things simple ways to protect identities online. What do you do to protect yours?