Home
Just thinking about where our personal data is located makes my heart race. Every time we PCS, I freak out a little bit more about our data at home. I use a filing system to keep the paper and digits under control every day, but it’s still a challenge when we move. Part of my PCS Plan is to maintain custody of all our data in transit. It’s not possible, of course. So I triage. What goes with us? All thumb drives, tablets, laptops, and the big desktop tower(s). I’m so sad to admit we have more than one tower.
Here’s another confession: I use the JOYS method of organization. So all my paper files are organized perfectly for moving. We have 4 file drawers for reference files, old bank statements, medical records, and warranty papers. The only papers that need to travel with us have the PII on them. I have digital copies of the receipts/warranties in case they’re lost.
Your mailbox contains a lot of data if you receive bank and credit card statements, health insurance statements, and other private paperwork in the mail. We recently went paperless and started using a PO box. Now, nothing comes to our physical mail box at home except Occupant/Resident junk mail.
Your trash! Shred anything with your name, address, or any personal information. I go the extra step of shredding anything that has our bank name, any bill, retirement information, or any personal mail with someone’s return address.
All your networked gadgets (phones, computers, smart devices, etc…) contain your personal data, contact lists, and viewing, browsing and shopping histories. Lock them and secure their access to protect your data. Strong password protections and behind locked and secure doors!
Work
If you’re employed by anyone other than yourself, they possess your most personal information: full name, DOB, SSN, tax information, and possibly your health insurance and retirement, etc… A year after I left a job, I was notified that their HR database had been breached and all my PII was exposed. They offered a year of credit monitoring to compensate me. Oh, wow. Yes, that will make me feel so much better! 😦 Of course, I can’t mention that without adding that I worked for the DoD along with my husband when the OPM was hacked.
Do you ever use your work email or work phone to have personal conversations? Those emails and texts are not private and can be read by your work’s IT department at the least. If you work for a government agency, they’re public information and can be the subject of a FOIA request.
Some careers and jobs are now using social media for publicity. The days of finding your real estate agent on park benches are over. Now they’re all over the internet with photos, addresses, and phone numbers! If your face is on a billboard or website for work, your personal privacy is affected. If you use your real name for your personal social media, it could have significant implications for you. At the last school system where I worked, they required each one of us to have a website with a photo. Ugh! It took a trip to the Superintendent’s office, but they agreed to let me use my old school photo from the same grade I was teaching.
If you drive a company vehicle, your location and driving habits can be tracked using GPS technology. That’s the least invasive type of tracking some employers are using. Some employ cameras inside the workplace to monitor productivity and even bathroom time. Here are some current updates on workplace privacy.
Car
Buying and registering vehicles involves handing over your PII to auto dealerships, possibly financial institutions, and state DMV agencies. The last time we purchased a car, I asked up front to opt out of releasing our PII to third parties and put in writing that we officially requested to keep it private. In registering the vehicle, we submitted our Florida exemption to the DMV again. Florida, as almost all other states, sells your vehicle registration information to third parties.
After you own the vehicle, if you sign up for OnStar, or similar road assistance services, they also connect your PII to your locations and driving habits. Any of this can be used by someone who accesses this data, either by hacking or court order. The same is true for our Express passes and toll services. All the convenient ways we pay for travel track our whereabouts and are connected to our names and credit cards.
Your license plate is connected to your PII and is being photographed and tracked more and more. The craziest and newest one I heard was fast food restaurants scanning our plates to track and offer us better choices on the electronic menu boards when we drive up! Our HOAs and employers scan tags for their own purposes to monitor our movements and our guests. I live in a state with thousands of photographic ticketing machines. These are operated by companies that maintain databases of all the tags they detect. My neighborhood is also full of doorbell cameras that collect the same information. It will be hard to drive around without your car being filmed or photographed multiple times per trip.
Your car’s cameras will be the next type of data to be breached. Do you know how much of this is saved and stored by your vehicle’s processing system? What about when you’re traveling, parking, etc… Our new smart cars have cameras and detection systems installed and we know next to nothing about how the data is collected and stored. For those of us who drive on secure military installations, what kind of valuable data are we collecting by just going to the commissary? My husband drives through security gates into even more secure areas. He parks next to a Tesla. Now there’s the next security breach waiting to happen.
Elsewhere
The most obvious example is our shopping habits. If you provide stores with your real name, phone number, email addresses, and locations for those convenience/discount cards, then you are being tracked by them with accurate information. Our credit card companies already know where and when we shop and what we purchase. Every breach involving these stores releases their databases of our PII and purchases. Imagine your medication purchases in the hands of someone who wants to harm you.
Finally
The more I read about the amounts of data we generate, the more afraid I become about the ways personal profiles are created and tracked. Just listing all the data locations gives me a bit of anxiety. What is my solution? I definitely don’t hide from technology. I create multiple personality profiles. No one name, email, phone number, or account profile has all my true information. I have different names, a business name, and about a dozen email addresses for shopping and account creations. Of course, it takes a little time to keep up with all the accounts. It’s definitely worth it to muddy the water so that no corporation or agency has the entire picture of who I am.
copyright 2019 GR
Now Hide Me 