We all have the right to privacy, the right to keep our private life only to ourselves, and to share information about ourselves with people around us. It’s a basic right of any person that is usually guaranteed by the Constitution. But at the same time, many people voluntarily or sometimes, without knowing it, share their private information online. The situations can be different, starting with some online payments and finishing with interaction with other users. Students, as one of the most active users of the Internet, should care a lot about the protection of their personal data, and this article was created in order to explain how to do it and why it is important.
What do we understand under personal data?
Personal data is everything that can be used to identify the person, like first and last names, citizenship, place of residence, email, IP address, geo location, etc. Information regarding your race, religion, sexual orientation, state of physical and mental health, and biometrical data are also considered to be personal data and are supposed to be protected. Some people think that it is not a big deal if someone knows about your religion and has your picture, but all this data is used to create detailed profiles of Internet users. The most simple and innocent way to use it is when Google is showing you targeted ads. And other ways to use this info can be multiple.
How do we leave our personal information online?
The strange thing about sharing our personal data is that in real life, we all are very conscious about telling someone too much. It’s very easy to notice when we talk about students; they try to keep their personal lives secret from their parents, but they eagerly share the same info online. To make it clearer how you can unwillingly leave too much info about yourself, here is the explanation: you can do it when buying something online, creating profiles on different social networks, downloading something from the Internet, or vice versa, uploading some pics of yourself (active digital footprint); when you use smart things, like for example smartwatch or some toy, via cookies, or data about your location you are living so-called passive digital footprints. Let’s imagine you need to order term papers online, so for sure, you will Google and look for some reliable companies that can do this job for you. In this particular case, you will leave both your active and passive digital footprints. After making your decision and choosing the writing service, for example, Writemyessayforme cheap, you will share some of your private information, at least when you create an account to pay for the service. In this case, it will not be used against you because the service is reliable, and in the future, Google will inform you about similar companies just in case you need to find another service; it is not always that safe.
What can students do to protect their data?
Parents who worry about their children can talk to them and share these simple rules that will help them not to share too much private info with the digital world.
– If you are creating an email to exchange emails with the teachers in your school or college, then, of course, it’s reasonable to use your first and last name. But if this email is needed to register an account on some social network, then it’s better to go with some nickname. Just remember that it’s important not to use the real name of any of your acquaintances or relatives; invent something randomly.
– The password must be reliable. Yeah, it’s difficult to invent something new every time because you end up having like one hundred passwords, and you don’t know which exactly you should use in each case. That is why you can make two or three reliable passwords using capital letters, special symbols, and digits. And set a rule to check using a special program whether the passwords were compromised and change them, for example, once every half a year.
– If there is a possibility, use an avatar and not your picture. Of course, it doesn’t make any sense if we are talking about Instagram or TikTok, where you post your videos or pics, but for other profiles, it’s better to use a picture of a kitty or a daisy instead of your own face.
– and, of course, it’s necessary to talk to your child about privacy settings; for example, explain everything about the importance of two-step verification, especially for those applications where scammers can somehow get access to your financial data. Another thing you should never skip is reading carefully the Privacy Policy of any service you are planning to use. In most cases, we all just skip it and put the tick without even reading the beginning of the conditions. And believe us, you can find a lot of surprising, and not in a good way, conditions.