Why is it important to
remember that the internet is public?
Because the internet is so accessible and contains a wealth of
information, it has become a popular resource for communicating, for
researching topics, and for finding information about people. It may
seem less intimidating than actually interacting with other people
because there is a sense of anonymity.
However, you are not really
anonymous when you are online, and it is just as easy for people to
find information about you as it is for you to find information about
them. Unfortunately, many people have become so familiar and
comfortable with the internet that they may adopt practices that make
them vulnerable.
For example, although people are typically wary of
sharing personal information with strangers they meet on the street,
they may not hesitate to post that same information online. Once it is
online, it can be accessed by a world of strangers, and you have no
idea what they might do with that information.
What guidelines can you
follow when publishing information on the internet?
- View the
internet as a novel, not a diary - Make sure you are
comfortable with anyone seeing the information you put online. Expect
that people you have never met will find your page; even if you are
keeping an online journal or blog, write it with the expectation that
it is available for public consumption. Some sites may use passwords or
other security restrictions to protect the information, but these
methods are not usually used for most web sites. If you want the
information to be private or restricted to a small, select group of
people, the internet is probably not the best forum.
- Be careful
what you advertise - In the past, it was difficult to find
information about people other than their phone numbers or address.
Now, an increasing amount of personal information is available online,
especially because people are creating personal web pages with
information about themselves. When deciding how much information to
reveal, realize that you are broadcasting it to the world. Supplying
your email address may increase the amount of spam you receive (see
Reducing Spam for more information. Providing details about your
hobbies, your job, your family and friends, and your past may give
attackers enough information to perform a successful social engineering
attack (see Avoiding Social Engineering and Phishing Attacks for more
information).
- Realize that
you can't take it back - Once you publish something
online, it is available to other people and to search engines. You can
change or remove information after something has been published, but it
is possible that someone has already seen the original version. Even if
you try to remove the page(s) from the internet, someone may have saved
a copy of the page or used excerpts in another source. Some search
engines "cache" copies of web pages so that they open faster; these
cached copies may be available after a web page has been deleted or
altered. Some web browsers may also maintain a cache of the web pages a
user has visited, so the original version may be stored in a temporary
file on the user's computer. Think about these implications before
publishing information—once something is out there, you can't
guarantee that you can completely remove it.
As a general practice, let your common sense guide your decisions about
what to post online. Before you publish something on the internet,
determine what value it provides and consider the implications of
having the information available to the public. Identity theft is an
increasing problem, and the more information an attacker can gather
about you, the easier it is to pretend to be you.
Behave online the way you would behave in your daily life, especially
when it involves taking precautions to protect yourself.
Authors: Mindi McDowell, Matt Lytle, Jason Rafail
