Part 2 of 2; Your Phone and Emails
Personal information is more available, and we give it out freely. I’m like any modern American. I have an iPhone, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Linkedin, Blog, Google+, Web site, and e-mails. You need to learn how to use your security/privacy settings.
Your iPhone will give you away every time. It logs where you are and what you are doing. First go to iTunes and change your back up setting to encrypted, then (if you are using the cloud) make sure your backups are encrypted in the cloud too. When you take a picture, by default, the phone tags the time, date, and location as part of the file. If you post the picture on the Internet people can get that information from the picture. Check out your phone settings and learn how to turn on/off the location services. The iPhone can turn the location service on and off for individual programs. Anytime I’m taking a picture for the web I turn off my location services first. If you have an Android or Blackberry phone learn those setting and how to use them.
To keep my personal life personal, I have three phone numbers and multiple e-mail addresses. My first phone number is the one on this site. It’s a voice mail service and doesn’t ring anywhere. When you leave a message I get an email with a .wav file attached with the message. My next number is a Google Voice number. Google Voice is awesome! I can forward it to anywhere I want. I can use the computer or my smart phone to make calls from it. I can turn it off during certain times and can block any number I want (very useful for sales and collection calls). Then I have my actual cell number. My voice mail number is posted everywhere, my Google Voice number I give out to everyone and is on my business card. My actual cell number I only give it out to certain people.
A close friend started changing his number every year because of the people at work that got his number and used it inappropriately. Now he has a Google Voice number and doesn’t have any issues. He simply turns off his Google Voice number when he isn’t working.
I also use Google for my emails. Keep in mind that Google data minds everything for advertising information. So if you have something that needs to be private, use something else. I have three personal emails. An AOL account that I’ve had forever and is forwarded to my Google account. I use this one to fill out forms on and off line. I have a Yahoo account that I give to my friends, and it also is forwarded to my Google account. This way emails go through two different spam filters and I don’t see any of it.
I have a couple business accounts, one for this site and one for the company I’m working for right now. It sounds super complicated, but it’s easy. Everything goes to my phone and I only have to check three different things. Having different accounts keeps my life separate, and well organized. This works well for me, and keeps my personal life personal and off the web. The amount of crap you will get if you post an email account on line is mind blowing (that’s why this site has a service instead of my email address posted).
Remember, don’t put anything on the web that you don’t want people to see. And, that once something is on the web, it really never goes away.
Stay Safe,
Ben