Protect your personal information

In this day and age, almost every activity can be done online. From getting in touch with your friends thru chatting and email, promoting your business through social networks, gaining information from Internet forum, shopping online from e-commerce websites, paying bills, online banking and so much more. Most of the time, websites you go to requires you to register before you can use the services or before you can interact with other members like in an Internet forum. For some sites, you can get away with just your nickname and some fictional address like “paradise”, “heaven”, etc…, but websites like an ecommerce site and online banking requires you to put in your real name, complete address, credit card information, email address, phone number and other sensitive personal information. You may think that giving your personal information to your trusted company’s website is secure enough, but think twice, no matter how advance the technology is, Identity Theft is a Problem .

For the past year, I’ve been wary about my personal details posted in the Internet. I can’t help it, I need to post some personal information because I maintain an online shop and a blog. But I make sure that I don’t divulge too much details such as bank information unless it’s a successful deal. I no longer upload gazillion of photos on my Facebook page unlike with my Friendster account before because some people use other photos and also use other people’s name for illegal activities. When shopping online, I prefer to use Gcash and bank deposits for local sellers. When shopping in an international site like Amazon, it’s a different case, a credit card is needed to be able to complete the transaction. The use of the credit card online had hindered us for buying online in the past because of credit card frauds. It’s only this year that we decided to take the risk and shopped online but still, we only choose few reliable sites.

For the avid online shopper who always uses a credit card for every transaction, a Secure Payment Agent like Shop Shield may be of great use since it protects your personal information by not revealing them and makes use of random generated information for you to use. It’s like having a double protection for you, but it’s the best thing to do considering the amount at stake in case your personal information will fall to the wrong hands.