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Why is it important to keep your Data Secure?

Why is it important to keep your Data Secure?

Why is it important to keep your Data Secure

Your data is probably the biggest asset you have today. Spending more than half of your day sticking to one electronic device or another, you generate data every online second of your life. Calculating it all, the world produces around 2.5 quintillions of data. This data that you generate, though created by you, doesn’t entirely belong to you. It is looked over by many entities in the digital world, including the platform that you used to generate this data. 

As the idea of personal freedom exists in the physical world, there is no corresponding idea of Digital Freedom in the virtual world. This creates a constant danger on your data of being misused by malicious entities or falling prey to the n number of cyber threats always lurking on it. 

It thus becomes incumbent for you to take ample measures on a personal level to ensure the privacy of your data. Strong security measures are needed to ensure not just the security of your data but also complete ownership of it. 

Here are a few reasons for you to understand the true eminence of securing your data against all cyber threats.

Your data is looked over by many

It’s not just the companies that can view your information, but also a few unauthorized entities like hackers or data brokers with not much effort. And if they got their hands over your data they can & might use it to fulfill their baleful intentions. Though there are some laws & also a few things that various platforms might be doing to protect your data, they have also proven exiguous in comparison to the threat that prowls over your data constantly. 

Since the use of the internet has been increasing in recent years, the governing bodies are still stumbling in creating the right laws & legislative rules that can ideally solve the present situation of cybercrimes. Though stronger laws like GDPR have come into existence, they are still not perfect to solve the problem. So, for now, what’s needed is a solution at the personal level.

Threats lurk on your data

Probably the most obvious threat that lurks on any data on the internet is that of malware & viruses. Both these things can become the most viable source for you to lose your precious data & for it to land in the wrong hands. There is various malware like spam messages, adware, ransomware, and more. And the same is the case with viruses, like Trojan horses & more, each of which can harm your data immensely. 

And you never know how it comes to you. As long as your data is available on the internet, it will always remain under the threat of getting affected by any of these entities & your data will always be at the stake of being stolen, lost, or misused. Also, you can escape these by even saving your data on your computer’s hard drive as malware can steal your data even from there. So, no matter what you do, it is never really safe from them, unless you save it somewhere online, where no one but you can get to your data.

Brands need to understand that when they finish using their data, they should dispose of it carefully. What is no longer useful for you, might be someone else’s treasure. If any third party can get their hands on your data, they will use it according to what they deem best. This can land any business into a loss of trouble, including loss of credibility and eventual existence. Many businesses realize this threat and use secure data destruction services to get rid of all information, which is no longer relevant to them. This helps them prevent any untoward incidents from happening after they have disposed of their data.

They know what you searched & from where

The search engines you use to find any information on the internet are eavesdropping on you.  Besides that many applications also track your location at all times & though it might not sound so scary, it is considering that if someone can hack them, they can track you all day easily. And using this information these services gain from you, they show you similar advertisements or send you messages. And thus begins the cycle of you receiving spam emails with similar content as your search.

To get rid of this problem, use a good private browser, that lets you search whatever you want without snooping on your search history. Moreover, this will help avoid being a target to spammers who send you emails containing malware.

Their Privacy Policy, your permissions

Ever read the privacy policy of the applications you install? Or the platforms you use to store data on the internet? If not that, have you tried thinking of why applications take so many permissions from you? We guess not. Well, the fact of the matter is that you should. Because when you agree to this privacy policy, terms & conditions, and permissions of these applications or platforms, you are allowing them to gain access to a lot of your data. They can divert you through the language of the policy, causing you to think that they are securing your data while prying on it.

By accepting these Privacy policies & agreeing to the permissions, you allow them to access a lot of data on your devices. What you can do to stop this from happening is by actually paying heed to these things & reading them carefully before you start using them. This will help you understand what your applications ask of you & in case you don’t want to share certain information, you can simply decline. The most that will happen is that you won’t get to access a feature of two. But that isn’t a really big price to pay for ensuring your privacy.

Social Media is deleterious

We know how much you love updating your social media accounts with every nitty-gritty detail of your life. From that movie you went for last weekend to that bruschetta you had for lunch, it’s all there on your news feed. But do you know how easy this makes for anyone to stalk you?
All they need to do is stay updated with your posts & they would know more about you than you think.

Besides with so much of our data on the internet what makes the present-day scenario scarier is the fact that all your data on these social media platforms is nowhere near safe. From our pictures to our conversations & even the complete detail of our preferences is there & it is always threatened. A single breach can lead to the loss of all this data of yours, leading your data vulnerable to many serious cybercrimes. 

Not just that, even if your account is hacked, your identity on the internet can be stolen quite easily & used to cause you harm, not to mention all the details about you that the hacker will be getting.

Can you trust your cloud storage?

Though it is the age of online storage & cloud storage platforms, not all of them are safe. It has time & again happened that these storages have been under a breach and as a result of it millions of people have lost their data. These breaches can cause you to lose your valuable data in a matter of minutes & all you will ever get in return for it will be an apology from the company that your cloud storage belongs to. 

And in case you are wondering what this information contains & where it is taken, let us enlighten you. This information can contain anything & everything from your details to usernames & passwords too and they are sold on unauthorized black market sites for as little as a few dollars.

To keep away from this threat what you have to do is just store all your digital assets on a trusted platform that ensures the safety of your data, without snooping on it. You can also own your domain through a few platforms, to ensure the ideal security of all your data. Though such services come at a small price, it is nothing compared to the security they provide. 

You might not use them, but they are watching you

It often happens that we have an application on our devices that we are not even using recently, but at the same time we don’t even bother to uninstall it. After all, it is just harmlessly lying there, not doing anything. Right?

Well, no.

The more an application stays on your device, the more information it extracts from you. So, even when you stop using a certain application, you cannot say that these applications will harmlessly exist on your device. On the contrary, it will keep gathering more & more information from you & expanding over time. This leads to endangering your data. Suppose that it is allowed to access certain files, so even after you stop using that application, it can read all your old & new files on your device.

So, stay away from third-party applications as much as possible as they are a probable source of malware.

Closure:

Ensuring complete security & safety of your data should be a prime responsibility to you. But none of them can guarantee 100% safety of your data to you, they can only help you avoid the havoc & treat the losses at best.

The only ideal way for you to ensure the complete security of your data is when you own a part of the internet. This happens in the form of owning your domain. This way you get to have a little piece of the internet as your own that you can use to store all your pictures, documents & other digital assets that you wish to keep secure as no one but you can access it. 

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