Top 5 Tips For Protecting Your Digital Identity

The digital environment has grown exponentially over the last decade, creating a wealth of amazing products, services and opportunities. With the increased connection via Internet of Things (IoT) devices and online services, comes a vast amount of data. Some have dubbed data as “the new oil” given the value it provides businesses as they try to create superior customer experiences to stay ahead of the competition. A lot of the data used to bring us customized services is highly personal information including our name, date of birth, addresses, family details, employment history, medical history and much more. There are so many benefits to providing this level of information, but protecting our digital identity has never been as important as it is now.

Despite some high-profile cases like the Cambridge Analytica scandal, businesses still don’t put due focus into cybersecurity to protect people’s data from exploitation. To gain that trust, businesses need to ensure they do more to enforce the right level of security. However, there are things we can do to help keep ourselves protected. In this article, we will talk about 5 ways you can help protect your own digital identity.

What is digital identity?

Before we delve into the tips, it is probably worth defining what we mean by a digital identity. Sometimes referred to as “Identity 2.0”, your digital identity is everything known about you and your physical identity but stored on the Internet. Companies compliment the information and aggregate countless other elements about your online behavior to give it a broader context. This might include emails, where you shop, how you shop, what you buy, when you are online and how active you are on social media. There are millions of data points collated and per person the number can range between 1,500 to ten’s of thousands depending on the platform.

Top 5 Tips for Protecting Your Digital Identity

Below are our top 5 tips for protecting your digital identity. While these are sure-fire ways to help with your online protection, always be sure to check out any benefits you may lose from sharing your data before getting too deep. Remember, many brands have very good security and will try to use data for very useful purposes.

Tip 1- Multiple Digital Personalities

One of the best ways to keep your digital identity secure is by having multiple online personalities. Take a simple example. You would never consider using your company email to carry out personal activities and similarly, you would never use your personal email for work. You manage separate accounts for their purposes and the same applies to the digital world.

Applying this to your personal identity, you could have one email account that you use for banking and your financial administration. You will never use these details for anything like social media or gaming. For Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or any other social accounts, have a separate email account and security information. You may then have a third account for personal accounts such as television, mobile, electric, water or any other billing services.

It’s difficult to remember at first, using original accounts for these purposes will soon become second nature and benefit you in the long run. It will be difficult to tie these together and if one gets hacked, the others will still be secure.

Tip 2- Password management

Believe it or not, the days of passwords are gone, and you should start considering what we call a “passphrase.” This is the first line of defence against your identity, something we must take seriously along with an account number, a userID or email address.

Passwords have become too easy for hackers to penetrate, with algorithms able to try unique combinations of letters and words in an instance. However, consider the below:

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A very specific phrase, known as a passphrase, like the above would be almost impossible to guess or for algorithms to pick up. Once you use letters, numbers and special characters in a sequence, it becomes cryptic.

Ensure you pick a phrase familiar to you and practice writing it before you dive in. The last thing you want is to keep forgetting where you placed the various letters and numbers as you’ll spend most of your time asking sites for password reminders.

Tip 3- Antivirus software

Besides having to rethink your password management, it’s also time to rethink your antivirus software. According to an article in PC Mag, it’s not so much the virus protection you need to worry about, but choosing a product that has a multi-layered approach addressing malware, ransomware, adware and viruses. With these multiple threats, having the right antivirus software installed on your devices is more important than ever.

We won’t review the choices available on the market in this blog as the link to the PC Mag article gives you all the critiques you need. Our point is don’t overlook adequate protection for ALL your devices. These companies are specifically trained to pick up on any potential threats from the sites you visit and keep you fully protected. While there are some free antivirus software solutions available, fee-based services routinely stay more up-to-date with recent malware trends and offer coverage over more devices.

Tip 4 – Reading the small print

Whenever you download something, there will always be terms and conditions associated to it. If there are none, you shouldn’t download it at all. We understand, there’s a lot of small print in those terms, but they are very important to read.

Within those, you will usually be told exactly what data the provider has access to, how they will use it and who else will see it. It is vital that you don’t just blindly click the consent box with apps you’re unsure of. If you are sure you need the app, be prepared to grant access to your device for the app to be efficient. For example, there is no value in having Google Maps on your mobile if you don’t allow it to have access to your location.

If you are using a Smartphone, the settings menu will tell you what apps have access to distinct types of information. Do a bit of research and see what you are allowing them to do (it varies between Android and iPhone devices).

Tip 5- If it doesn’t look slick, don’t click!

This one has been around for a while but is still prevalent and an easy way in protecting your digital identity. If you receive an email unexpectedly or that looks odd, don’t click any links within it. These spam and phishing emails are getting more sophisticated and look very close to the actual thing, with detailed instructions, business graphics, images and phone numbers.

Remember, corporate and financial institutions will never ask you to click on a link to enter your personal details. Typically, they discourage that practice and always ask you to go to their secure site and enter your log-in information. If you are in doubt, call the business first to see if the email is legitimate.

And as always, don’t open any attachments that come with emails (unless you are absolutely sure of the originating source) as they most likely contain malware of some sort. There are several telltale signs to check if an email is spam such as an e-mail address that doesn’t relate to the company, demanding tone of the content, poor sentences or grammatical errors, and misspellings. (Here are more tips from an antivirus provider in recognizing fake emails.)

As a rule of thumb, if you are not expecting an email or it is from a sender you haven’t subscribed to, don’t open it.

Final Thoughts

Cybercrime has definitely kept pace with technology and it’s a safe assumption it’ll be around as long as it’s profitable. While we expect our corporations to safeguard our data, there’s no guarantee they can do so given the audacity of the data thefts and misuse we’ve seen in the last decade alone. It’s in everyone’s best interest to keep up with the latest news and use the tested technologies to prevent your identity from ending up in someone else back pocket.

There are other ways in protecting your digital identity, and we’ll continue to bring updated information as it comes to light. As always, if there is something you want us to research and report on, let us know through our comment section below or reach out to us through our Contact page. All the best ~ Glen.