You must have tried printing your feet on the floor with water or using paint on your hands in childhood. It was fun, right? Indeed it was until that footprint thing followed us on the Internet as well. If you are not aware, we must tell you that whenever you browse the Internet, you leave footprints that hackers can access.
If you have ever tried to watch a movie horror show on an illegal website, you must have come across the “download a VPN” option. VPN keeps your online activities private and safe from hackers. This article will mention a few tricks that you can follow to manage your internet footprint and maintain your privacy.
Tricks to Keep Your Privacy Safe on the Internet
Trick 1: Keep an eye on your name
The first trick to manage your digital footprint and keep your privacy intact you must be aware of how your name or personal information is being used on the Internet. Each of us is on social media nowadays, and it is straightforward for others to take up our photographs or personal information.
To see if your name or personal information is being used on the Internet falsely or without your permission, you should Google yourself. This sounds like quite a “self-obsessed” thing, but it helps. When you Google your name, you will be able to see the information posted on the Internet related to you.
If you see something related, you can ask the particular website to take the content down. To make this process easier, there are specific notification options that you can switch on, and you will be notified whenever your name pops up in an article on a page. You’ll get an email regarding that.
Trick 2: Change your privacy settings
The next trick is an effortless thing that is you have to do is change your privacy settings on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, Pinterest, or more. There are higher chances of our personal information getting leaked or used by somebody from the platforms.
So, you must restrict your profile to your friends or limit the people who can see specific posts or information posted by you. This feature is available on almost all social media platforms. It has become a new trend for people to make a public and separate private account on Instagram.
And honestly, it is a good technique because then you can carefully choose what you want and do not want the public to see. But if you do not want to manage two accounts, you must change the privacy settings to keep the hackers and the misuse of your personal information away.
Trick 3: Strong passwords
This trick is the fundamental one that you must follow. Passwords are the foremost thing that keeps our social media platforms and personal information safe; therefore, you must keep a strong password that anyone cannot guess or crack.
Many people think that passwords are not a big deal, or they might forget due to which they keep an easy password or the same password for all social media platforms. Keeping an easy password is known and keeping the same password for all the platforms is a huge NO.
Recently research showed that across the world, the most common passwords that people keep for social media platforms are “12345678, birth dates, and the mobile number”. It’s a very foolish thing to do, so make sure that the password you keep must be so strong that nobody can guess it.
Trick 4: Unnecessary links and advertisements
You must have come across many unnecessary links on your Gmail or advertisements when you browse through the Internet. Those links and advertisements redirect you to a specific page that contains a virus, and those pages are made to keep a check on a digital footprint and hack your personal information.
You must make sure that you do not tap or download any unnecessary link or advertisement, and if you do, you should make sure that your antivirus software is up to date to keep your data safe. Another thing that you can do is download VPN as it will keep your identity safe whenever you watch illegal websites.
Lastly, you should never use public Wi-Fi if you want to keep your data safe. Public Wi-Fi or hotspot is available everywhere, and until and unless it is an authorized Wi-Fi connection, you should never use it. Even if you use a public Wi-Fi connection, make sure never to make a digital payment or go through your official documents on your mobile phone or laptop.
Sum Up
You cannot stop living digital footprints because it is meant to work like that by the online websites to see that you are not involved in any illegal activity. But, you can surely keep your data and personal information safe from hackers and other illegal websites by the few tricks mentioned above.
