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Esperance WA 6450

Ph: 08 9071 5542
Fax: 08 9071 5549

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What Do I need to know about
Providing Personal Information Online?

Thanks to Microsoft - Dec 2001

The question of providing personal information really has two parts.
First, how much personal information should you provide?
Second, how do you keep it personal?

As a rule of thumb, you should provide personal information only to sites that you determine to be reputable and have a valid reason for asking for the information. If you're purchasing a product from an online site, for instance, the site has a valid reason for asking for your address and credit card information. But if the site is asking for information that you think is not germane to the transaction in which you are engaging -- say, for instance, it asks you to provide your mother's maiden name -- then do not provide that information. If you are suspicious or if the site is asking too many questions, go with your instinct and keep your personal information to yourself.

Some sites will ask you to create a user account in which to store personal information, and they will prompt you to create and use a user ID and password. Here are some tips for creating strong passwords.

Microsoft Internet Explorer can keep track of user IDs and passwords for you -- but you need to choose whether you want it to or not. For particularly sensitive sites, you may not want to store your password on your computer, because another person who uses the same computer might use the stored ID and password to access your account.

Read the Privacy Statements

It is important to read a site's privacy policy to determine just what the site is going to do with the personal information it collects from you. Some Web sites treat certain bits of customer information -- names, addresses, e-mail addresses, and purchasing histories, for instance -- as an asset that they can sell to other merchandisers. If you do not want your personal information bought and sold in this way, be sure the site asking for your information has a posted privacy policy that promises not to engage in such practices.

Use Strong Passwords

The more time you spend on the Internet, the more passwords you will be asked to create and use. The key to strong passwords lies in their length and unfamiliarity. Passwords with eight characters are harder to crack than passwords with four or six characters. Passwords that mix letters and numbers or punctuation symbols (hyphens, for instance) are even more difficult.

Rules of Thumb for Strong Passwords

  • Don't use a common word with which you can be identified in a password-a word such your name or the names of family members. These are the kinds of password features that thieves and hackers first try, so don't make it easy for someone to break into your accounts.

  • Use upper and lower case letters if the system requesting a password can distinguish between them. It makes your passwords that much stronger because you now have, effectively, 52 letters to work with. And dON't think yoUr enGLiSH teacher is watching WHeN you chOose where to put your capitaL letters.

  • Use passwords with a minimum of 6 characters made up of letters and symbols based upon the other recommendations in this list.

  • Use a different password for each site or service that requires one. Otherwise, a security flaw or irresponsible operator of a favorite Web site could expose the password that you use to protect your brokerage account. The best rule is to use a unique, long, strong password for each site and purpose.

A final consideration: How do you keep track of all these strong passwords? Posting them on a sticky note on the side of your monitor is a profoundly bad idea because then they become public knowledge. One option is to keep your list of passwords in a safe place away from your computer. Another way to keep track of passwords is with a tool such as Gator, which will fill in the passwords for you when you visit known sites.






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