Gaurding Identities in A Digital Age


A bevy of men showed up to enjoy a cold beverage while talking about the threats that we face when we log on…here is the low down…

First, we defined what a digital foot print it is and how it never goes away.  Your comments, your posts and everything else that you put online can be found and used.  

The good news…there are resources out there are monetizing your identity so you get the right advertisemments.  

The bad news…there are criminals who are excited to get your identity and use it for not very nice reasons.

After we established some of the players on the bad side and discussed some of the methods that you can be compromised from (and there were a LOT of wide eyes when people realized that a stuffed animal connected to the internet can be used to hack your garage door) we brought the pax into a kindler gentler world where they could follow simple rules to protect themselves. 

  1. Never give your password up.  Tclaps to Caboose for sharing his ''Dell Support" AND for not giving up his password.
  2. Please try and use different IDs for online games/financial transactions and non financial transaction.
  3. Remove your birthday and address from ANY social media.  PLEASE!  A compormised FaceBook Account with a birthhday on it is easy pickings.   And just because you use LinkedIn for work doesn't mean that criminals will respect your boundaries.  Plus, as we all agreed…no one cares (Sorry Bullet)
  4. Don't click on shit, ever!   That includes Pierogi on slack.  No offense.
  5. Enable remote wipe (find my iPhone) so you can delete your phone if you lose it.
  6. Note:   This list is NOT comprehensive, and MiniMe was hungry, so we had to move on.

After a number of discussion on these rules, we moved onto various ways to protect your family.  These rules boiled down to rinse lather and repeat with the addition of some new tools.   We discussed OPENDNS which is a great source to protect you and allow you to understand what your family is looking at from a content perspective.

The Pax was great.   We had great conversation and I learned about new apps.   Anyway…time is short.   Here is a link to the drop box folder with all of the files from last night in it.

 https://www.dropbox.com/sh/3yybzdxfui7u81d/AABu73UahN6jP5SI5GqrElH2a?dl=0

 Print out the .PDF files for you and your M to discuss over a glass of wine.   I know it will help so you can protect you and your family.