When you visit a website, the website will likely get basic information about you, such as the IP address, your computer’s operating system, the browser you use, the ISP you used to log in. , location, screen resolution, etc. The data. Some websites store login cookies on your computer so that you don’t have to log in every time you access those websites. But that’s not all. When you browse online, you leave enough clues for websites and web applications to identify you. Let’s find out what personally identifiable information is on the Internet and how to protect your PII.
What is Personally Identifiable Information (PII)
Data that helps identify a specific person is called personally identifiable information, or PII for short. Examples of this data are social security numbers, telephone numbers, delivery addresses and passports. This data is combined with other data that you have already collected on the Internet via the device and the fingerprints of the browser, to create a digital file concerning you so that websites or any other entity can identify you on the Internet.
All of this information is stored with marketers and online brokers who sell your data to different companies who “want to show you relevant ads” and provide you with a “better user experience”. The same data can also be sold to cybercriminals who can harm you in several ways. So how do you protect your personally identifiable information? It’s possible? To some extent, you can control it. The following section explains how to protect your PII.
How to protect personally identifiable information
In the browser settings, an option says “Do not follow“Check the box or the corresponding radio button. This will prevent some websites from following you. However, not all websites pay attention to the request sent by the browser.
All traditional browsers nowadays have an option to prevent tracking cookies from tracking you on the web. Consumer browsers like Firefox, Chrome, Edge come with features that discourage user tracking. You can also customize the level of protection.
In Microsoft Edge, go to Settings and click Confidentiality and services. You will be presented with three levels of protection against tracking. Click on the desired level of follow-up prevention. Balanced is good and works in different environments.
In Mozilla Firefox, go to Preferences then click on Browser privacy which has a lock as an icon. You can select the tracking level to use. It also allows you to create custom rules for monitoring protection by whitelisting only the websites you want.
You can use certain browser extensions that prevent websites from following you. One of these extensions is Privacy Badger. For use with Microsoft Edge, you will need to install it from the Chrome Store.
Ghostery is another good extension to block tracking. It tells you what all tracking aids are present on a website. You can then decide which ones to allow and block.
By using the browser extensions and browser settings mentioned above, you can protect personally identifiable information to some extent. Here are some other methods to protect your PII.
Internet privacy tips
1]Do not share your personal information on the Internet. This includes your SSN, bank account numbers and associated passwords. Sometimes people think that a particular social network is encrypted and therefore share things like PAN (permanent account number), SSN and even their physical address. I once saw a person share their physical address on Twitter, asking to fight with another user.
2]You can use a P.O. Box instead of sharing your address. You can get one by applying to the nearest post office. So you can just enter your PO Box number whenever you come across entities asking for your physical address.
3]You can use any of these disposable email ID providers for websites that request you. They can be used for things like single checking when you sign up for something. This helps protect your other email credentials. Likewise, you can get a voice call number from Google Voice for phone calls. Learn more about Google Voice here.
4]You can also ask the search engines to delete the data concerning you. If the site you are visiting uses Disqus comments, you can click the “Do not sell»To prevent Disqus from sharing your data.
5]You can use some artifacts which allow you to withdraw files from the different companies that followed you.
Here are more tips to help you stay safe online and protect personal information while browsing.
This explains what personally identifiable information is and how to protect your personal information from the databases of social marketers.
- Keywords: Online security, privacy