Sunday, March 6th, 2011 (
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When you're working with someone in a store or on the phone, what do you say when they ask for your name, address, phone number, zip code, number of children, annual income, etc? Hopefully your response is, "Why do you need that information?" followed by "I'd rather not provide that, thank you" (or disposable secondary e-mail address, not your main e-mail address depending on the situation.
Use your work phone
If you are not prohibited from doing so, you may want to take calls relating to an order or other professional service at the place where you'll be all day anyway.
Use Google Voice (or similar)
As of the writing of this article, Google has a function that lets you create a phone number with them (for free) and give it out to people. Besides allow you to then change your cellphone number in the future without worry (some people keep the same bad plan forever just to keep the number), you have several controls on incoming calls and being able to sort or block them.
Everything Else
Things like information about your family (wife, kids, etc), annual income, work place, personal history, and such are things I would hope I wouldn't have to tell you to protect. But then again, when was the last time you saw one of those web forms that asks questions like "your pet's name", "the name of your high school", "your father's middle name" in case they need to reset your password? (remember never to give real information to challenge questions).
And when someone you're talking to in person or on the phone asks you a question that you don't really want to answer, the best tip I've heard was to ask them in return, "Why do you want to know?" while smiling innocently. This forces them to come up with some kind of response to justify their nosiness.
 |  | When it comes to your personal information, remember that it's an odds game. If you have no point, purpose, or benefit to giving away information, the only logical outcome is bad. Why give it up if you can only lose? |
Protect your trash
Product Boxes
Don't make it easy for people to rob you. Haven't you ever seen a box like this on the curb and thought, "Huh. The Smiths got a new plasma." Thieves see just as well as you do. Come Christmas time, it's pretty easy for them to drive through the neighborhoods and pick targets based on their trash.
Remember to always dispose of trash in a way that doesn't call attention to you. Put it in front of a neighbor's house instead; someone you hate preferably (ok, I'm only kidding on that one).
Bills and letters
You should never just throw away documents with your valuable data on it. Do you really think people won't go through icky trash to make a mint off your personal data? Shredding is good, but the larger the paper that comes out, the more likely it is that someone will be able to easily piece it back together.
Right now, the only shredders that come close to obliterating your documents is a "Microcut" shredder. They tend to me more expensive, but worth it for the security.
Check out my Shredders and Shredding guide for more information.
| What do you do once your data is already out there? This. |
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