Importance of Online Privacy

What is online privacy? Well its just like real life privacy. If you meet a stranger in the street, you are not going to divulge details about your work, home, family, income or address so its the same online. You should be very careful what you write or post online because anyone can see it and they may even try to use it for their own benefit.

Lets say you're very active on social media and have lots of followers and you have been telling them about you learning to drive. You post your progress and when you finally pass your test you post of photo of yourself grinning holding your driving licence. You think your clever and blur out your address.

You then buy a car and again post a photo this, the car is parked outside your address but again you're clever and blur out your door number.

You then post a little video of you driving out of your street to showcase that you can now drive. Your follower love it and give you lots of likes.

But little do you know that there is someone who is collecting all those little snippets of information and building a picture of you and your life.

From your social media username and photos you've posted, they could probably work out your real name and address. By collecting more information about you, they may even have enough information to make loan applications or take out credit cards in your name.

These are just some things that can happen so it is better to be safe and limit what you give strangers.

The same principle should be followed when installing apps on your phone, if they ask for permissions such as location or access to your contacts - see whether this is reasonable in relation to what the app is meant to do. If for example it is a drawing app, it wouldn't need many permissions at all apart from access to your device to save your drawing files.