Email this page to a friend with a personal messageAre you worried about your online safety? If you are not in any way worried about your online safety, well, then you definitely should be. Identity thefts are rising exponentially every single year, and one of the primary ways that identity thieves get a hold of your identity is by finding out who you are based on your online activity. If you think that you are safe online because the Internet is so anonymous, then think again. The Internet is absolutely anything but anonymous; your Internet browser keeps track of all of the different sites that you visit, Gmail sends you ads based on the types of email that you are receiving; every time that you sign up for a web site, such as a chat room or a social networking site, then you are putting your personal information out there and essentially inviting everybody and anybody to find out who you are. As soon as somebody finds out what your real name is, then he or she can just purchase the rest of your information online, and then can discover what your real life address is, what your social security number is, how many kids you have, where they go to school, and so on and so forth. Are you worried yet? If so, then that's good.
Online safety is a serious concern of everybody, and you need to make sure that you take steps to ensure that you enhance your online safety as much as you possibly can. There are a number of different steps that you can take in order to make yourself more safe and more secure when you are online. Some of these steps include installing a security suite on your computer, turning your computer off whenever you are done working with it, unplugging your Internet cable or turning off your wireless switch, and only sending personal information on a computer that is your own that is not connected to the Internet through a wireless connection.
One of the best ways to improve your online safety is by setting up disposable email addressing service. The way that disposable email addressing works is that a different email address is assigned to each one of your contacts. That way you can make sure that you keep track of which contact is using your email address improperly. You can find out if a company sells your email address to spammers or to phishers, and which company is selling your email address to other companies so that they can send you unsolicited emails. If a company does misuse your email address, then you can simply just delete that particular disposable email address and it only affects one contact.
Disposable email addresses are a particularly good idea if you sign up for any online chat rooms, any online bulletin boards, contribute anything to a wiki, sign up for a social networking service, or any sort of similar venture. Disposable email addresses are also a great idea for any online shopping that you do. A disposable email address is in no way connected to your real name or any of your real information; thus, an email address is a fantastic way for you to protect yourself online. You can set up your disposable email addresses so that they forward directly to your real email address, or so that they forward directly to the trash. Many different disposable email addresses also allow you to reply to emails using your disposable email address.
