NCSAM: Get Serious with owning your data

A very well written article Get Serious About Cybersecurity: Take Ownership of Your Personal Data is being spotted through my twitter. The author of the article did a great job in talking about what we, as citizens, can do to help minimize the risk. Nothing is fullproof, but it must start somewhere.

Headings within this article include:

• Too Much Information
• Protecting Data
• Check Privacy Settings
• Own IT on Social Media

This can be broken down to a few points:

• Don’t share what you wouldn’t share publically
• Don’t make your profile public unlessyou have a good reason
• Don’t post pictures of your vacation until you get back

and

• always use caution when using a new app whether PC or mobile

I know about the oversharing way too much. There are people I have followed who tell us what they have had for breakfast, lunch, dinner and or snack. While I did check out the sharing of my whereabouts, I’ve since stopped that habit. I’ve never checked in at my own home, but I have checked in to a business to see what the game was, and I ended up being duke. After I saw that, I quit. I see someone travel across the country and they check in everywhere they can. Why? I have no idea.

We should know how our data is used. While we all hate reading privacy policies, mainly because they’re written in legal language and hundreds of pages, I’m proud to say that The Jared Rimer Network and MENVI, Bridging the Gap Between the Blind and Music do not write our policies in legaleese. I’ve made sure to mention what we collect, why, and what we’ll do if we can’t contact you for any reason.

Thats really all a privacy policy should have, unless the business collects payment info. If so, state this, what type of info you collect, how customers can update it if something changes, and what the policy is when the customer chooses to leave.

We’ve talked about one company quite a lot in their blunders. Without mentioning names, this company holds on to every piece of data on you, and can and has acertained other info without the customer’s concent. The company has called people based on caller ID data they have. Would nost companies do this?

There are other links to other aspects of this story, so I’ll stop here. What tips would you add to the conversation that I have not covered here?

Find me on social media through my web site hit me up by Email, or other methods should you have them.