By Alex Gryciuk
In a digitalized world, there’s no way around using the internet because almost everything relies on it to function; including you. Using the internet seems harmless, but, every time you use the internet, a digital footprint or a trail of data, invisibly follows every click. Passwords, websites visited, and what you post are all stored online. Furthermore, your personal information, although you might not know it, also is included in your digital footprint. A google profile to get around or creating a free account with your email are just some examples of how the internet obtains your personal information including address, birthday, and emails to name a few.
It’s inevitable, every time you use the internet, personal information also gets on there too. In most cases, your personal information is used to “profile consumers and deliver advertisements in a dramatically more personalized way”. In other words, your personal information will be used by companies in an attempt to send you more targeted advertisements. At best, your personal information is used as bait to get you to spend money. At worst, you become an itemized commodity for companies. Even worse, personal information could be used to harm you.
The thing about you, and your wallet, is that it’s not only companies that want your money. It’s also hackers who want to take advantage of you. According to F-Secure, there are about five different reasons why a hacker might want to steal your personal information: sell your data, identity theft, account takeover, phishing attacks/extortion, and harming other companies. Most harmful, identity theft remains among the biggest use of personal information to hackers and affects 33% of Americans. From data breaches or hacking, hackers often steal bank information, social security numbers, addresses, emails, and names to fuel identity theft, or using personal information without consent. Although stolen identities can be used in a multitude of ways, the top five according to Credit Karma are opening credit cards/taking out loans, intercepting tax refunds, covering medical treatment, taking flights with airline miles, and opening utility accounts. All, leave the victim vulnerable to losing hard earned money and future attacks. In fact, according to Fortunly, in 2020 alone, $56 billion dollars were lost due to identity theft. Overall, hackers take advantage of your personal information that is on the internet for their own gain.
But how does personal information get leaked to hackers? Oftentimes, stolen information is obtained through data breaches, or when “information is stolen or taken from a system without the knowledge or authorization of the system’s owner”. These data breaches that can leak social security numbers, addresses, emails, bank accounts, names, etc affect millions when they happen. One example of a major personal information purge is the Equifax breach that leaked the personal information of almost 148 million Americans in 2017. According to Epic.org, “the data breached included names, home addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth, social security numbers, and driver’s license numbers. The credit card numbers of approximately 209,000 consumers were also breached”.
Major data breaches are devastating, but there’s still someways to be safer on the internet. According to State Farm, some of the best ways to protect your personal information is by creating complex passwords, using two factor authentication, watching for fraud, set up account alerts, and guard against identity theft by freezing credit cards and notifying officials. Furthermore, it would be helpful to be cautious on the internet by not clicking on random, too good to be true, or unprofessional websites.
Although the internet provides unlimited possibilities, every click and action on the internet is tracked and stored forever in your digital footprint; with each use, putting yourself more at risk from personal information purges at the hands of hackers.