The Personal Information You Should—and Shouldn't—Give Away
Back in the early days of the Internet, when people thought about online safety it mostly had to do with making sure their credit card information wasn't stolen. Fortunately, online merchants have stepped up their security, and banks and credit card companies have taken measures to limit potential consumer liability for stolen financial information. The larger concern is about identity theft, in which a crook doesn't just go on a shopping spree. They can do major reputation to your credit profile and your reputation. For this reason, the information you really need to look after online is the same information you need to protect most closely offline.
Your Social Security number, for example. Some government online services require you to enter this information in combination with other identifying details. Nobody else needs to have it.
Read the fine print. If you're ever in doubt about how your personal information will be used, read the Web site's privacy policy—and if you don't like what you read, don't be afraid to click away.
Many newspaper sites will ask you for personal details like zip code and date of birth, because they're trying to gather demographic information on their readership. There's not a whole lot a data thief could do with these two pieces of information, but by the same token there's no particular reason you couldn't fudge it a bit. The newspaper doesn't really care if your birthday is May 10 or October 5, but a data thief does.
When you're shopping online, make sure the URL reads "https" instead of "http" before you enter any information into a form. At that point, you have a few choices. You can hand over your credit card information, which most people are comfortable doing these days—particularly when they're dealing with major retailers who have a reputation for protecting customer information. Many merchants take orders over the phone or work with PayPal as well.
Another option in lieu of giving away your credit card number is to use a virtual debit or credit card number. Citibank, Discover, and PayPal all have some version of this technology, which essentially generates a dummy number in lieu of your actual account number. The merchant never has your real account number, so if its database is hacked, the thieves get nothing more than an expired, meaningless account number and your information stays safe.
Be careful about where and to whom you give away information like your address and phone number. If you're ordering something for delivery, you'll have to cough up your address. But for your Facebook, MySpace, or LinkedIn profile, it isn't a bad idea to be vague. Your friends know what part of town you live in, and anybody else who's interested is probably the sort of person you don't want to know. Ditto your resume on job boards—it's not a bad idea to create an email address specifically for job-hunting purposes and leave your phone number off the resume.
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