Protect Your Information Better

With how much information we keep stored on our mobile devices, it's scary to think how vulnerable we have become. And over the last couple of months, it seems we hear more and more about data breaches compromising millions of private identities. Then there's even that TV commercial where a mom gives her son her phone to play a game and he almost posts an embarrassing pictures on her Facebook. So we always want to be conscious of the resources at our fingertips to keep those embarrassing pictures and that personal information safe.

I chatted with a nationally known tech expert and the founder of PK Ware, Matt Little, for the latest tips to keep your data safe. He's got tips that won't cost you an extra penny. It's all stuff we already have access to, but don't know it.

I am awesome. How about yourself?

I'm wonderful, and you're here to talk a little about some ways to help keep everyone entertained on their devices but also to make sure they are protecting any personal information at the same time.

You got it.

So what are some of tips that can help parents to keep an eye on what their kids are doing online without crossing the line and making kids feel like they don't have any privacy?

Well, one of the things that we love to tell people is to use something called Guided Access. For instance on the iPad, you can go into general and then settings and then accessibility to turn it on. What this will do is lock your device into an app. So if it's a game that your little one wants to play then you can go ahead and before you hand the device to them, you can triple click the button and it's locked in that app and you have to enter a code to get back out. It's great from an accidental point of view.

Then more practically, more of us need to get familiar with what's already possible on our devices. And whether you have an iPhone or an Android phone, there is a website you can go to for managing that device. For iOS users, it's icloud.com and for Android users it's android.com/devicemanager. Basically these sites allow you to locate your device and remember where it's at in the world, lock your device by sending a message to the lock screen for whoever has it, and you can remote erase it. All of this is already set up for you, but most of us don't even know it's there. You just need the account you had to create when you got your phone to log right in and then you can protect your information.

Wow, so this is something that everyone already has access to? Not something extra we need to pay to have. That's crazy that it's right at our fingertips but only a few people know about it.

Right! Everyone should be familiar with this especially since you already have the login for it. Another thing that we like to tell everyone to do is to think about using a unique password with each and every website. This may sound really hard, but there are a bunch of free tools out there that make it very easy. These are the password managers that install right in your browser allowing you to set it up for each website you go to quickly and automatically.

The last thing that we like to tell folks to do is to think about protecting information itself. We are sending a lot of sensitive information in emails from tax documents to bank statements. We are even putting a lot of things in cloud stored services like dropbox. That information should really be encrypted, and there is free software out there that can help users do that. PK Ware, my company, actually software for free that makes it easy to do that.

And that's perfect because you're right. There are so many things we rely on our email for, and we don't want just anyone to be able to get to that email and access that personal information.

Absolutely. A lot of fraud still happens with email, and I think everyone has become pretty savvy to the fact that there is no Nigerian Prince that is trying to give them a million dollars, but they still get taken advantage of on a fairly regular basis. If you can get into someone's email, you can pretend to be there credit card company, their bank, and then phish for them to click on those links. It's a pretty scary world out there. You definitely have to be suspicious of opening emails from people you don't know and then making sure you protect information from people inside those emails.

And yeah it definitely is scary with all of the people who pretend to be something you would consider a trusted institution. Now where can people go for more information about everything we talked about today and more on better ways to protect our information?

They can go to our website or our blog at www.pkware.com/blog. We have a bunch of tips there with links to utilities that folks can start using to protect their information today.