How to Protect Your Family Data


Nowadays, everyone in the family have an online presence to a greater or lesser degree, visiting sites, using apps and spending time on social media networks. However, it is equally important that they are aware of all the data they are sharing during their time online. After all, stats at safeatlast show that up to 75% of kids would even share personal information of themselves and their family for different goods and services.

 Many apps and sites will ask you to connect with profiles, while other platforms may even restrict your access until you input the information required. What is more, there are services that may demand a great deal of private details, such as banking information; these need to ensure user identities are protected at all times.

These are only a handful of the threats looming online, with many other malicious downloads, copyrighting issues and unauthorized surveillance activities disturbing the peace of users everywhere. As a result, we have comprised a list of useful tips and guidelines to help you safeguard your family data before it gets in the wrong hands.

Set up your own security settings

When getting started with a new app or site, make sure you check the security settings immediately after setup. Most of the time, these apps come with default settings that won’t do much to protect your private details. Nevertheless, they do offer the option to fine-tune the settings later on, and that is precisely what we are recommending that you do. 

As soon as you set up the account, head to the security or privacy segment and make sure the app/site won’t be able to share data with other services, or otherwise make use of the information you have shared at the platform.

Make use of two-factor authentication

The two-factor authentication process is, in fact, an added login security layer that provides further proof that the right person is accessing the account. These options normally allow users to link their emails, phone numbers or other accounts to the one in question in order to protect it with something other than the regular log-in credentials (username and password). What is more, the fact that users link their profiles to personal accounts, phones and the likes further proves their identity when accessing it.

In this regard, you may want additionally want to consider some useful precautions, such as securing your phone in the first place. If you choose to use your smartphone as the second factor for authentication, you need to secure it with either a password, Touch ID or face recognition to be sure you are the only one accessing it.

Turn off location

This is particularly true about apps – they tend to track users’ locations in order to collect and better familiarize themselves with the users’ surroundings. Later on, the information stored about your daily routes could become valuable data. Only in case you are using the GPS locator feature, on your children’s smartphones or another device for tracking purposes per se, it is recommendable to keep it on for as long as you need. 

Beware of unsecure Wi-Fi

As you may have noticed by now, when connecting your computer or other device to a public Wi-Fi, you could often get an additional warning about the information you share while using the connection. This may be alternatively remedied with a VPN or other protection service, especially in cases when you can’t choose a more secure connection.


Kossi

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