Protecting Your Privacy.

As the following article shows, it doesn't matter how safe you are about your personal info, if bad guys what it they will get it. You just have to limit what you give them.

"We share more and more personal details about ourselves online, but you may still be surprised when you find actually how much information really is available about you. Gaining rapidly in popularity are information-gathering websites, such as Spokeo and Intelius that pull information from government databases and hundreds of social-networking sites. For a small amount, you can run a complete background check on someone and get access to income, occupation, address, number of people in your household, spouse's name, credit status, education, and religion. It even offers a satellite photo of your house, complete with an estimated value, and personal photos gathered from various social networks.


All of this data comes from public records, so technically, they are not doing anything illegal, but it is still a strong wake-up call to consider your digital footprint.

So what can you do to protect your privacy? With Spokeo, you can remove the listing. To do so, visit: http://www.spokeo.com/privacy

However, as they point out on their website, “Spokeo aggregates publicly available information from third party sources. Therefore, removing a listing from our directory will not remove your information from its original source and therefore your information might still appear on other directory sites.”


Combined with the information that is available from public records, more and more people are using location-based services like Foresquare and Facebook Places, to let people know where they are. These services let users check in to different locations, via smartphones, and to share their location with their social network friends. It also gives users the option to "tag" friends who are with them at that same location. This may seem like a fun feature, but it also raises a multitude of security and privacy issues as there is a lot of opportunity for misuse. It could, for example, be a burglar’s, or a stalkers, dream. Want to know where someone is? Check Facebook. Want to know when someone is away from home? Check Facebook.

Always think twice and be extra cautious of what information you share and with whom. And remember, if you wouldn’t give the information to a stranger, you probably shouldn’t be posting it online."