Whether you’re completely out, completely in, or somewhere in between… being safe is paramount, and being safe online is particularly challenging because there are so many “holes” through which your information can leak.
First, let me be clear… for me, online safety is about controlling my privacy. Who has access to what and what I reveal. For example, I’m not out publicly, so it’s important for me that no one can search by my public name and find my online presence. At least, not until I’m ready to let that happen. But no matter who you are… being safe online and controlling who has access to information about you is always a good idea.
Unfortunately, companies have a vested interest in “outing you”… obtaining ALL the information they can about you specifically so they can re-sell that to other companies. It’s a multi-billion dollar business that wages a never-ending war on our privacy. Worse, there are lots of things that identify you (besides a SSN). Your name, address, drivers license (or other ID numbers), bank account numbers, etc. are all going to link to you in some way, and there are lots of things that “rat you out”: your phone, most of the apps on the phone, your web browser, your desktop/laptop OS, not to mention every company you’ve ever done business with, especially your payment processors like your credit card company and bank. That’s not even thinking about the many ways you unknowingly give away your privacy if you use ANY social media stuff (i.e. Facebook).
Let’s put social media aside because it’s a whole other can of worms and just talk about communication. Specifically email. Everyone wants an email address… and every time you put one in it links you to everyplace else you put that same email address into. So… did you create an account at the supermarket? Do you have a loyalty rewards card… they know how often you buy that spicy salsa, you know. Oh, also signed up for Victoria’s Secret sales notifications? They know what you like to wear in the bedroom… it’s not hard for a 3rd party to link your likes up from all of these sources and build a profile of you. Even if you don’t disclose your age or race or gender… they can figure all that stuff out about you to a terrifyingly high degree of accuracy based on your likes and buying habits.
The best thing you can do to foil this is use a different email address and a different phone number every time you sign up for anything! Seriously. Unfortunately, that’s really difficult. I know of no service that will give you unlimited phone numbers that ring back to your real number. You can do this with email, but it’s usually limited to a time window. If you care to create a unique email address for every thing that’s the best policy, but if you can’t a single email that isn’t linked to you is still better than using one that is.
Because this is time-sensitive stuff (it changes all the time) I put links on the resources page. I’ll try to make sure that’s up to date. Feel free to let me know if it isn’t.