The path to better online hygiene

Practicing good online hygiene when giving any personal information to a service is a good idea. Give as little as possible and be conscious whenever entering information. Try to be aware in what data you are providing at all times. Ask yourself: “What could happen if this data would leak?”

Was other personal data leaked?

What kind of information had you given to the service? Personal details, photos, credit card numbers..

What kind of data had the service collected from you?

Was there data about other people than you? Your kids, friends, their email addresses, photos?

Remove unnecessary personal details such as your birthday and home address. Ask yourself why the service needs to have it? For age verification? Birthday notifications? “January 1st, 1900" will do just fine in many cases.

If credit card details were involved, contact your bank. The bank will probably want to cancel the card as a precaution. There might be a small fee involved, but that’s better than the alternative. In the future, do not give out your credit card details to individual services to store in their databases. Instead, use a commonly known payment transaction service with a good reputation whenever the service supports it. These include PayPal, Stripe and Amazon Pay.

Inform your loved ones if any of their personal details were involved. Remove such data if possible and avoid giving it in the future.