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    Your Personal Information Is At Risk: A Guide For Protecting Yourself
    Your Personal Information Is At Risk: A Guide For Protecting Yourself
    Your Personal Information Is At Risk: A Guide For Protecting Yourself
    Ebook118 pages1 hour

    Your Personal Information Is At Risk: A Guide For Protecting Yourself

    By Rich Owen

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    About this ebook

    Your Personal Information is at Risk is a detailed, informative, and comprehensive book that explores the current various threats to the security of personal information. This information can be stored on phones or computers, and can also be accessed by scam artists calling a home and tricking people into sharing personal information. The author uses personal experience, as well as research, to describe current threats, and solutions to mitigate the risks of security breaches.
    This book is very well-written, organized, and clearly presented. This is a very complex topic, and there is quite a bit of information to learn. The author has done an excellent job of presenting the information in an easy-to-read platform that conveys all of the information in an appropriately serious tone, so that the reader fully understands both the information, and the need to be fully aware of the threats. The author also provides solutions to confront the risk and ensure that there is no breach of personal information.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBookBaby
    Release dateNov 11, 2020
    ISBN9781098338596
    Your Personal Information Is At Risk: A Guide For Protecting Yourself

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      Book preview

      Your Personal Information Is At Risk - Rich Owen

      Your Personal Information Is At Risk

      A Guide For Protecting Yourself

      Rich Owen

      ISBN (Print Edition): 978-1-09833-858-9

      ISBN (eBook Edition): 978-1-09833-859-6

      © 2020. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

      Contents

      Dedication

      Preface

      Introduction

      Documents

      Life

      Education & Career

      Possessions

      Finances

      Family

      Protection of your documents

      Devices

      Your Virtual Self

      Privacy Points

      Common risks with our Digital Devices

      Hackers, Viruses, and Worms, Oh My!

      Vulnerabilities

      Backups

      Phones

      How does my phone know that it is me?

      It’s a Smartphone.

      Personal Computers

      How does the computer know that it is me?

      Using a computer away from home.

      Communication

      Phone

      Phone Scams

      You’ve Got Mail! (Email)

      The Basic Email

      Evil Email

      Evil Email Examples:

      Final Thoughts on email

      Messages

      Message SCAMS:

      Blended threats

      Cloud

      Internet (World Wide Web)

      Firewalls

      Wi-Fi

      VPN (Virtual Private Network)

      Applications (Apps)

      Social Media

      Likes & Comments

      Smile

      Financial, Medical and other Sensitive Applications

      Credit Monitoring

      Do you want to play a game?

      Data Storage

      Summary

      Lies

      Misuse & Fraud

      Risk and Risk Reduction

      Bullies

      Checklists & Reminders of what to do.

      Phone calls:

      Messages:

      Application/Game:

      Acknowledgements

      Other Books by this Author

      Dedication

      This book is dedicated to my grandchildren and to all who have an interest in protecting their information.

      Preface

      This book began as just a small book for new users of smartphones. It was originally written for children and teenagers. It was soon realized that there are also older first time users of smartphones. There are many features that also spread into the world of the personal computer and accessing personal information online. The entire world of social media and email also needed to be explored. This led to security and privacy, and discussing how your data is stored or processed online.

      Although this is all necessary because of the age in which we live, we have not totally gotten away from paper. Therefore this book is front-ended with steps that you should take to protect your paper-self as well as your virtual-self.

      To my security brethren, you will note that I avoid getting too deep so as to avoid exposing the reader to areas where they could put them further at risk.

      Introduction

      We live in the Information Age. We are constantly asked to provide information about ourselves to verify our identity or value. To do so, we need to hold some elements of our identity to ourselves while other bits of information need to be publicly available. We need to be in control of the information that defines us. There are forces of evil that exist to collect as much information as they can about us. Granted, not all information collection is evil. Some information collection about us is intended to better serve us, but what happens when that well intended collection is exposed in a data breach? Some individuals and companies create profiles of data about us, defining our virtual identity. They can use that profile to influence our lives in a way that may not be in our best interests or worse, they may be able to virtually become us. Acting on our behalf, they can send email for us, access our bank accounts, and more. They can virtually destroy our personal, financial and emotional lives.

      This book will examine several actions that you can take to physically protect your documents. For information about you that is in a digital form, we will explore ways in which you can reduce the risk that your data will be disclosed, modified, or just made unavailable even to you. The following diagram shows that we will create a foundation of protection based on our physical documents. On top of this, we will explore how your digital information is at risk and what you can do to reduce that risk in the devices that you use, the ways you communicate, and even data that you put, or allow to be put, into the cloud¹.

      1 The term cloud is the collection of computers that are accessible via the internet, sometimes called the World Wide Web (www). When you access Facebook, your bank, a booking site on the internet you are accessing a computer in the cloud. That computer may be anywhere in the world.

      Documents

      We will begin by identifying what scraps of paper in your life may be of value. Then we will suggest steps to take to protect them.

      Life

      The following are examples of documents about you that you should consider protecting:

      Birth Certificate

      Social Security Number

      Driver’s License

      Identification cards (student ID, etc.)

      Marriage Certificate

      Citizenship paperwork

      Divorce Decree

      Passport

      Last Will & Testament

      Death Certificate

      Living Will

      NDR

      Other

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