How to Safeguard your Personal Information from Spammers?
Answering to spam calls and reading marketing SMS are wasting almost an HOUR in your daily life, unfortunately the telecom laws to handle this issue is not so effective in India.
Hello Sir, do you need loan? do you need free credit card? do you need a car? you won free gifts, please come and collect it asap.. the list goes long and our day-to-day life is getting interrupted by this. In-fact, this is alarming, your personal identification information is leaked and misused. Do not ignore and move on!
Nowadays, we get spam calls from normal mobile numbers instead of marketing phone number. So we cannot keep blocking them all too. We should realise that it’s a personal information security issue, that can be avoided upto an extend.
We need to understand certain things about Personal Identification Data before knowing its risk factors.
How do the stolen personal information being misused?
Personal information is too costly these days, marketing people collects this data and sell it to many companies who wants to sell products and used to target the audience in marketing.
The important point is, they would always need mobile number along with your correct name and may be age group too. That will help the companies for targeted marketing for specific products and services.
You will start receiving marketing SMS as well when your information leaked.
What is most dangerous about personal information security?
Your information may be stolen (I would like to use that word since its purely illegal) and marketed for many purposes and it can even help hackers to crack through your financial information sites, social media hacking etc.. This may be used for terrorism as well as per study.
How do we safeguard Personal Information?
Marketing SMS and calls can be avoided to an extent if you enable Do Not Disturb (DND) in your phone. All network providers allow DND. You can do it by sending ''START DND'' to 1909 from your mobile number.
The sources of data leakage is not limited to the above discussed points, so you may need to be careful when you handle information. Remember, its not just a phone number and name, that's being sold for a lot of money and misused by many companies for business.
"To remove your information from spam callers list, there are few ideas that you can try along with other data safeguarding techniques. Whenever you get the call from a tele-caller, do not confirm your name before they introduce and understand the purpose of call. If you find it’s spam, tell them its a wrong call and wrong person, so your data in their database become invalid since a mismatched data (name and number mismatch) may not be reused or they resell it after that"
Keep your personal data safe, lets hope to see strict rules for personal data security in future and makes your next generation safe. Until then, lets use some hacks to safeguard our data.
Appreciate if you can share your thoughts in the comment box.
Hello Sir, do you need loan? do you need free credit card? do you need a car? you won free gifts, please come and collect it asap.. the list goes long and our day-to-day life is getting interrupted by this. In-fact, this is alarming, your personal identification information is leaked and misused. Do not ignore and move on!
Nowadays, we get spam calls from normal mobile numbers instead of marketing phone number. So we cannot keep blocking them all too. We should realise that it’s a personal information security issue, that can be avoided upto an extend.
We need to understand certain things about Personal Identification Data before knowing its risk factors.
- What is Personal Identification Data (PID)?
- How do the marketing people collect our data?
- How do the stolen Personal Data being used?
- What is most dangerous about PID leakage?
- How do we safeguard our Personal Information?
- Full Name
- Mobile Number
- Address
- Age
- Date of Birth
- Now every shops you visit ask your mobile number and name, it looks like for billing purpose but its not, they use it for marketing and sell it to other businesses too.
- Marketing people standing in-front of shopping complexes, supermarkets asking you mobile number & name offering free coupons, bumper prices, etc..
- Online registrations and when you search for some online information, nowadays few websites require your data (mobile number, email and name) for information search itself.
- When you submit an application form (physical copy) via private organizations.
- Whenever you apply for a loan via agents, they collect your personal information from the application form (illegally) before submitting it to the banks.
- Loyalty points registrations in shops for additional offers.
- Most dangerously, via WhatApp groups and Facebook groups, your information being stole. Spammers can collect your name and number together when you save your name in WhatsApp settings.
- Other sources of information leakages are from recharge shops, photo copy shops too.
How do the stolen personal information being misused?
Personal information is too costly these days, marketing people collects this data and sell it to many companies who wants to sell products and used to target the audience in marketing.
The important point is, they would always need mobile number along with your correct name and may be age group too. That will help the companies for targeted marketing for specific products and services. You will start receiving marketing SMS as well when your information leaked.
What is most dangerous about personal information security?
Your information may be stolen (I would like to use that word since its purely illegal) and marketed for many purposes and it can even help hackers to crack through your financial information sites, social media hacking etc.. This may be used for terrorism as well as per study.
How do we safeguard Personal Information?
- Never provide your personal information to anyone unless it is absolutely necessary.
- Never give your mobile number and name in shops or supermarkets for billing purposes as its not a mandatory thing to do.
- Your personal information all together is most valid (name, email, number, dob etc.,) and dangerous too if leaked. So if a supermarket billing requires your information, provide the right phone number but a different name. (Actually, you can still choose to provide wrong name or mobile number if you feel its unwanted and you are once in a while visitor).
- If you are submitting an application anywhere, make sure your hand over it directly to the respective organization, or company. Never go via agents, consultants or intermediators.
- Whenever you take a copy of your ID cards or any other documents, make sure that the copier takes only required number of copies alone. Make sure all copies are collected, even though it was not printed correctly.
- Always destroy your personal information documents, bills, etc after the use.
- Google and internet is vast, if any of the websites or portals require your registration for providing you information, go for another site or look for another search options as well. It is not mandatory to provide your personal information for google search.
- Online Search - Never keep your 'email logged in' when you are searching in google as the search history will save against your email address and it collects your search information and the data will be used for marketing.
- Do not provide your personal information to random people, for any offers, competition or any such stuffs.
- When you get the spam calls, ask questions if you feel its irrelevant, ask them how did they get your number? and tell that you will complain if this repeats. Also ask their information and name before you provide them any information.
Marketing SMS and calls can be avoided to an extent if you enable Do Not Disturb (DND) in your phone. All network providers allow DND. You can do it by sending ''START DND'' to 1909 from your mobile number.
The sources of data leakage is not limited to the above discussed points, so you may need to be careful when you handle information. Remember, its not just a phone number and name, that's being sold for a lot of money and misused by many companies for business.
"To remove your information from spam callers list, there are few ideas that you can try along with other data safeguarding techniques. Whenever you get the call from a tele-caller, do not confirm your name before they introduce and understand the purpose of call. If you find it’s spam, tell them its a wrong call and wrong person, so your data in their database become invalid since a mismatched data (name and number mismatch) may not be reused or they resell it after that"
Keep your personal data safe, lets hope to see strict rules for personal data security in future and makes your next generation safe. Until then, lets use some hacks to safeguard our data.
Appreciate if you can share your thoughts in the comment box.
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