Excess Information and Identity Protection

Information is what identity thieves are after, and this is what you need to hide from the identity thieves. There are two effective strategies to hide your personal information:

A. Never participate in anything that asks for even your gender.

B. Provide only what is necessary.

There is no third option, and if you exercise option A then you should get off the Internet bandwagon, as there is nothing for you. But, if you chose option B then you can avail all the benefits offered by the great medium, and also keep your data safe. This is what we will talk about in this blog post.

Honesty is not required

Honesty not always pays; at times it costs very dearly. Consider a situation where you are asked to fill-in a long application form to get access to whatever is there on the other side of the form. You fill in all the required details to the best of your knowledge, and boom. You find you have been duped. The site was not what it was claiming to be, and it is already late. You have given all what it wanted to take.

Did honesty pay?

Consider the alternative. You visit a website, and fill only what is absolute must to get access to the content on the other side of the iron curtain—you did this even to the most trusted of the websites like Amazon, Google, et al. Now, even if you are duped, you have not given it all.

Created Identity

If they are after your identity then give them nuts!

Provide them fake information of a fictitious person whose only reason for existence was to help you get access to data on the inside of the wall. There are services like www.bugmenot.com, which you can use to get ready-to-use login information. You can also use a temporary e-mail ID, which will cease to exist after couple of hours, but will do the needful for you.

Do not be too generous with your personal details. It may not mean anything to you, but it mean a great deal for thieves. And when lost, it will come to haunt you.

As said honesty is not required, and so is the generosity.