A successful business profile means striking a careful balance between what you show and what you keep to yourself.
And today, this isn’t just a matter of reputation management and marketing, but of security against fraud. Nearly $17bn was stolen through cybercrime in 2017, with almost one in three Americans being notified of a data breach. When the big corporations that form the fabric of your online life talk about tightening up their security, they’re doing so to avoid negative publicity — not because they actually want to keep you protected.
The data you share online tends to take one of three forms. The first is the stuff that you publish or share. Every time you make a blog entry, or post a marketing or personal photo to Instagram, or write or Retweet a Tweet, you’re revealing something about yourself. Of course, this is often your intention. But if you inadvertently reveal something that can be misconstrued by your professional associates and customers, or exploited by identity thieves, it will soon give you cause to rethink.
The second type of data is that which you leave on your browser. This is your history of visited sites, your active log-ins to the email, social, and banking websites that you use, and the ‘Google Ads’ and similar that appear on browsers where you have an active login. That’s why many believe it is optimal to utilize a VPN while browsing on the internet. These ads, too, can be revealing of your personal identity to others who use your computer or may peer over your shoulder when you’re working, whether colleagues or customers, because they are often based on things that you’ve searched for privately or even discussed via email.
Just take, for example, the case of UK Conservative MP Gavin Barwell, who used his regular browser to look at a rival Labour Party press release online. He saw an ad saying “date Arab girls” at the top of the page, and immediately tried to humiliate his rivals by tweeting about Labour’s apparent lack of scruples for profiting from such an advert. What he didn’t realize — but the internet quickly did — was that this was a Google Adsense ad tailored just for Barwell based on his preferences and previous online behavior.
As one Twitter user observed, “Oh — this is glorious, @GavinBarwellMP’s browser history comes back to bite him.”
The third type of data is more insidious, although it is connected to the second. You probably know about cookies. These are the tiny invisible files that are created as you surf the internet, recording your choices, your log-ins, and other little behaviors that help reveal more about you to the algorithms and mechanisms of the websites you use. They are what enable you remain logged in to websites when you navigate away and then return to them. They’re neither a good nor bad thing — like any tool, it’s what’s done with them that is good or bad, helpful or destructive.
Receiving personalized ads isn’t always a bad thing. It just worked out badly for Gavin Barwell! But sometimes it can feel creepy, because it reveals just how much our cookies reveal — or misrepresent — to the companies whose sites we visit. That information is supposed to be private, but of course there is always a danger of it being exploited.
As you see, there are advantages and disadvantages to all forms of data that you share, intentionally or otherwise, when using the internet. This, unfortunately, is the bind that the big corporations, and online culture in general, has put us in. For example, ads on Facebook may creep us out, and Facebook’s exploitation of our data is often troubling. But it is the money they make from this exploitation that enables them to offer their basic service for free (which means that over 2bn people use it), and indeed to allow small businesses to tap into that data when using Facebook ads as a powerful marketing tool.
For all these reasons, people in business need to consider carefully how they use the internet — both in their business and personal lives. Rather than just going along with things, it is more empowering to sit down and decide on your approach to data management. This can be reassessed regularly, especially as websites change their policies and data laws change in the wider world.
In the case of stuff that you share, draw a careful line between what’s business and what’s personal. Make sure to adjust the settings on your personal accounts to a level of privacy with which you’re comfortable. This includes things like whether or not Instagram and Twitter automatically log your location with each post.
In the case of browser privacy in the ‘real world,’ the use of private browsing modes at sensitive moments, and a disciplined approach towards managing cookies and browser history will help to make sure there are no upsets in the office.
And in terms of cookies, you need to again consider how and when you use private browsing mode (which isolates your session from your regular usage), clear your cache, and what permissions you give the websites you use.
This new visual guide walks you through simple steps to achieve all this in just a few minutes.
