Ways in which you divulge info online
You may be exposing more about yourself than you realise in your online activities. For instance, did you realise that if you have your browser configured in the most common way, your name and e-mail address are available to any Web site you visit?
This may seem like a paranoid suggestion, but many people keep the name and e-mail fields in their browser's options or preferences blank or filled out with bogus information. Of course, you are sacrificing the convenience of letting the browser provide that information for you in some situations. But if you do this, and monitor your cookies, you'll always know when, and to whom, you are providing personal information.
Then there are the myriad accounts that most of us maintain to access a variety of sites and services. Surely you've been asked to fill out long forms of personal information to register for Web sites. Most of these include a question near the end asking if it's OK if they share this information; if they're polite it's defaulted to No.
We're not saying that reputable sites will pass on your personal information to criminals, but clearly the more places you put this information the more chances exist of it being appropriated for misuse.
You should think seriously about allowing an unknown company or person to collect personal information about you. If you give them permission to "share this with a few of our select advertisers," it will most certainly be sold to other companies who trade in identities and demographic information. This is one of the possible ways that your personal information gets spread around.
Even if you don't give them permission, do you really know if you can trust the people behind the Web page to respect that? Those names and addresses are valuable, especially if they can be tied to shopping or surfing habits. Before giving personal information, it may be good to check out the site's privacy policy. Keep in mind, though, it's still really the honor system.
Hi,
Great site, very inforrmative. But . . . .
If this is an Australian site, why are all your examples American.
What Australian agencies and credit bureaus should be contacted when id stolen?
Regards,
Ross