Increasing Your Privacy Online
Матеріал з ТерноВікі
The internet is very much a public place. Honestly, the whole saying about being anonymous online is largely a farce anymore. Everything you do online is visible to somebody, and most things you do in public, social-type sites is visible to more than just your few closest friends; possibly the entire world.
Keeping some things private is more important than ever before, especially on the internet. Governments and other groups are collecting and storing data at unprecedented levels, and it seems as a whole, the world is getting darker and more sinister than ever before. Or, maybe it's just that we're better-aware of the different types of people in the world now due to the increased availability of the internet. In either case, it's a good idea to exert at least a small amount of control over your online visibility. These tips here can help you do just that: increase the amount of privacy you have online.
Simple ways to increase online privacy
When somebody wants to find you or find out about you, they don't just search for your name. Sure, by "Googling" your name someone can get your address, phone number, relatives, work location, public records and so forth, but there is so much more information that somebody can glean about you by using other details that you might not know leak information about you.
Use multiple email addresses - Email is great, and while having one email address for everything is certainly more convenient, it's also has huge privacy implications. Using the same email address for every website, for every correspondence can allow people to know more about you than you care for them to know. There are dedicated email-address search engines that will search databases and public records (digital) to locate the person behind that. Even if you don't use your real name on a website, if you're using your personal email address, it can give away information that you would rather remain relatively private.
Free email addresses have existed for ages now, it's not hard to get one. And, if you'd really prefer just to have one inbox and yet enjoy the increased privacy of having multiple email addresses, you can use a desktop email client like Thunderbird or use mail forwarding which is offered by most email providers.
Create a unique username for each site - probably the easiest way to find out all the "embarrassing" information about somebody is to find out which username they use and use a search engine to find their online postings. For whatever reason, sometimes when people use usernames on a site versus their real names, they feel what they're writing is anonymous, or at least pretty private. Which, this is not true at all if your name is tied to your username online. Honestly, people post some things that might be embarrassing to them using usernames all the time thinking it can't be tied to them, personally. For this reason, it's a good idea to create a unique username for each website you sign up with.
Being safer on the internet
Using different email addresses for different purposes and using different usernames on different websites are small things, but they can make a big difference in terms of having a bit more privacy online. Again, the internet is a very, very public place. Unless you're comfortable living your life in the center of the public square, it's probably a good idea to at least do something to keep a little bit about you more private.
