John Sileo Identity theft Expert Archives - John Sileo, Cyber Security Training

Google History and Your Privacy

What started in 1997 as a research project and a mission as the way to organize the world’s information has turned into the worlds largest search engine. Google has given anyone with an Internet connection access to more information than they realize. With such quick access to information, you need to be careful what you put on the World Wide Web and realize what is contained in your Google History. Remember, posts – and searches – are permanent. Here are a few privacy issues when it comes to Google:

1. Google’s Cookie and Toolbar. When you use their search engine, Google places a self-renewing cookie with a unique ID number on your hard disk. As you search websites, Google records your surfing activity and saves your searches. There are ways to change your Internet options to stop the cookie tracking and you can learn more by visiting www.google.com/support/accounts/.Remember, nothing you do on the Internet is private; it is all tracked, aggregated, analyzed, sold and used for a variety of purposes (many of them good). The advanced features of Google’s new toolbar for Internet Explorer not only updates automatically, but it also tracks which websites you visit.

Electronic Information Privacy – Securing Your Job: Part II

As we discussed in Electronic Information Privacy – Securing Your Job Part I, if you are an employee at a corporation, association, university or small business, you must realize that protecting electronic information and organizational data is vital not only to your company’s profitability, but for your job security.

Here is a crash course on how to promote information security within your company. The most effective way to build a Culture of Privacy is to break it down into 3 simple steps (most corporations skip the first step, dooming them to failure):

1. Motivate the Individual. Train yourself, your employees and executives on how to protect identity and company information first. Learning the basic principles of privacy at an individual level is a pre-requisite for all subsequent forms of data security, and supplies the necessary motivation to apply the same habits at work. Each employee needs to overcome their own apathy, ignorance and inaction before they are equipped to protect corporate assets. By making it personal, your executives and employees are acquiring the building blocks necessary to construct a corporate Culture of Privacy. Electronic information privacy training is good for their wellness, and is a means to a safer and more profitable end.

Electronic Information Privacy – Securing Your Job: Part I

Electronic information privacy will eventually be one of the criteria on your job performance review. In fact, it’s not just electronic data that you should be concerned about, but all data. If you are an employee or executive at a corporation, association, university or small business, you must realize that protecting organizational data is vital not only to your company’s profitability, but to your job security. If it isn’t right now, it will be soon.

As a company employee or business leader, it is essential that you clearly understand the relationship between identity theft, data breach and your bottom line. One of the costliest data security mistakes I see executives make is that they initially approach data privacy from the perspective of the company. They don’t recognize the following reality: All privacy is personal. It’s not electronic information privacy. It’s not physical data privacy. It’s personal.