"I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves." Matthew 10:16
I just want to give everyone a reminder about on-line security as we head into summer and everyone is leaving home for vacations, reunions and summer fun. Remember that our CAST Team forum on Etsy is a PUBLIC forum. You may trust your team mates with personal information, but you can't trust it with everyone that may be lurking on-line. Also, remember that sites like Facebook and Twitter are growing by leaps and bounds and their security is not keeping pace. Your privacy settings may not be good enough.
Please don't share information such as:
"We're leaving for two weeks in Florida today. I'm so excited!"
"My eldest daughter is leaving home. She got the cutest apartment on ______ Ave in _______ right on the corner and a new job at ______. Here's her graduation picture. Isn't she cute?"
"The whole family is going out to eat tonight to celebrate John's birthday."
"My birthday is tomorrow, when is yours?"
"My dog is such a big teddy bear. If someone broke in he'd just want to be petted."
"We feel so safe living here. No one on our street even locks their door."
"I've got a million errands to run today. Won't be back for hours."
Birth date sharing is common on our forum and elsewhere, but remember that your birth date is a crucial piece of information that someone needs to steal your identity. Think twice about making your birth date public info. It's true, you won't get a birthday message from Etsy or 50 Happy Birthday messages on your Facebook wall, but you will be safer.
Share information about your vacations and day trips AFTER you get back or make sure that everyone knows that there is still someone back at home taking care of things. You can put your shop on vacation hold or put in a message about delayed shipping without announcing you're actually going to be gone. You can even make it seem like you are home by sending messages and updates from your location or phone and scheduling blog posts or tweets to publish when you are away.
Protect your team mate's personal info as well. You may know that Susie Q is on vacation in Costa Rica for three weeks, but you don't need to share that info with everyone.
When you register for social networking sites and other sites, you don't have to fill out all the boxes--just the required ones. Also, when it asks for your first name, you might be able to just use your first initial and so forth.
Check your privacy settings for sites like Facebook every so often--they keep changing them. Also change your password periodically.
There's so much more on-line security info that we should all know about, but I just wanted to get you thinking about it.
Have a SAFE summer!
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Comments (8)
Sue, once again you give us such good advice. It is so easy to think no one else is reading our blogs or threads and say way too much! I just recently went on FB and redid all my privacy buttons. Thanks so much!
Good tips, Sue! (or should I just say, SR?) :D Appreciate you pointing all of these out!
Thanks for that reminder Sue! Its especially easy to forget on the thread since we assume we are with friends!
Thank you Sue! Greatly appreciated!
Great advice! If you do put your birthday out there, don't put the year.
Great tips for online security!
Thanks
Great advice!! We tend to get comfortable & forget where we really are! Thanks for the reminder! =)
Thanks for the great advice! I'm brand new to the CAST team but this is my google ID so I'm still getting stuff figured out.