Personal information is private information, therefore you should think about how this can be viewed or used by others. For this reason also, you should always obtain the permission or consent of a person if considering giving out information about them. As in the real world, there are risks associated with giving out personal information and you should not give out personal details to others or companies online unless you are certain that they will not abuse your details. You should be aware that by giving out information online for example on chat rooms, you are making it publicly accessible to others.
Publishing your email address on a website or giving it out in a chatroom for example, means that Spammers or virus senders will find it easy to contact you and send unwanted content to your inbox (see the Spam section for details of how to protect yourself from this).
Similarly it should be remembered that when you meet others online, many people use personas and may not be who they appear or may have a motive for finding out information about you. Disclosing information online such as your real name, home address, telephone number, personal life or routines may for example mean that you are vulnerable to 'identity theft', whereby the thief uses your details to open bank accounts, credit cards, and email accounts for financial gain. They may also be used to find out personal things that you might want to keep private from others, for example if your thoughts on a sensitive subject or a personal experience are published online, whilst you may be happy to share these with family or friends, you may not wish to share them with others, such as work colleagues. Remember it is very easy for anyone to find information from web pages using search engines and web browsers.
Internet Chat, Bulletin Boards, Discussion Forums and Web pages
Not everyone you meet online will be trustworthy as in the real world. For this reason limit the information on personal profiles to ensure that you cannot be identified offline, for example using a nick name rather than your real name, using general information wbout where you live e.g. South East England rather than a specific postal address, not including photographs of yourself or giving specific information about your personal routine e.g. where you work, where you attend clubs or organisations. Please see the Internet Chat, Spam and Netiquette sections of the web site for further details of how to protect yourself online.
E-commerce, Shopping online and Internet Banking
Companies often require you to submit a certain amount of personal information for the purpose of verifying your identity for example if you are opening an account to shop online, use a chat room or sign up for an email. You will also be required to give out your credit card details if for example you are purchasing an item online.
You should verify therefore the authenticity of the company and their request, the security of submitting your information, reading any terms and conditions associated with this ).Some companies for example may sell your personal details such as name, email address and phone numbers to other companies who will then contact you with advertising from their company.Please see the E-commerce section for further information.
Recording & updating passwords
Passwords are private security information which are intended to prevent others from accessing or using your accounts fraudulently, hence these should not be shared with others. Family or pet names may be easily guessed by others, therefore it is suggested that you use a combination of letters, capitalisation and numbers which is memorable to yourself but is difficult to for others to anticipate. Attempts are frequently made to trick people into giving away their passwords and account details, for example through 'Phishing', the process of fraudulently sending an email to look like it has come from an official bank or company requesting a person's details so that the scammer can access or use the person's account. Please refer to the Phishing section of the website.
Spam
Spammers often use various techniques such as web spiders or net bots to search and collect email addresses for the purposes of sending out unsolicted bulk emails for the purpose of advertising or even to distribute viruses, trojans or malware. Please refer to this section of the web site for more information.
Sources: Cyberspace Research Unit, FKBKO.
