Hey, I get it you open your Instagram in the morning and see streams of new pictures by your real-life friends and internet friends all doing something without a care of who is watching.
Some of them are in their bras and panties, some talk about their period cramps, some talk about how excited they are to go on vacation, some talk about their conversation with their therapists, and some talk about their funny family drama.
It’s all normal right?
It seems like everyone shares their whole lives on the internet unrestricted.
You can scroll through anyone’s social media and find out who they were friends with at which point in history, what their personalities were like at any age, want to find out when they started dating someone? Look at their Facebook and Instagram! Want to find out what thoughts have been through their heads 10 years ago at 10? Well, scroll down to find out!
In a world where privacy has become a myth and everyone willingly share intimate details of their lives with strangers on the internet, here are 17 things you should make sure not to share.
Table of Contents
1. Salary/networth
This is an obvious one but trusts me, some people are more than happy to share their networth with the world (facepalm).
I’ve written an entire article on why you shouldn’t share your salary detail and networth with anyone. You can read it here.
In short, here are a few problems you can run into when you reveal your income and networth:
- People will ask to borrow money from you
- People will lose respect for you
- Someone may want to cause you harm thinking you got money
- Your close friends may get jealous and ruin what was otherwise a good friendship
- You may feel the need to update as your income increases
2. Exact date of birth
Depending on who you are, if you are a public figure, your date of birth may be well-known knowledge.
If you are an average joe, you really want to keep your exact date of birth as private as possible.
In a lot of cases, when you go sign up for an account, the default password would be your birthday.
When I was in high school, that was everyone’s default password and I kept it for a bit longer than I should have because I didn’t have time to change it.
If I had told everyone about my birthday, I likely would’ve change into something more secure earlier on.
Your date of birth can also be used to authenticate your identity on a lot of legal documents. It’s just not good to let people know about it unless it’s necessary.
3. Weight and height
If you are an actor/actress or an athlete, your weight and height are pretty much public knowledge. A public record isn’t always accurate and up to date but in most cases, it is pretty close to what your actual weight and height are.
The reason you don’t want people knowing your weight and height is because it’s personal. You have it on your driver’s license to identify you.
And if you got a stalker, what’s to say you didn’t just give them an exact gauge of their opponent in cases where they want to abduct you?
Okay, that may sound very far-fetched but you wouldn’t tell strangers your weight and height so why would you announce it to the whole world by posting it on the internet?
4. Where you work
When you tell people where you work they may be able to track your exact salary based on your title. And we already talked about why that isn’t a good thing.
There are also cases of people being stalked and killed by someone they had an argument with on the internet. How did the perpetrator know where a stranger would be? Well, it’s all over their Facebook!
Don’t tell people where you work unless it’s for work and networking purposes.
5. Home address
This is very obvious. No, do not share your home address with people on the internet.
Some Etsy sellers complain that they have buyers driving to their house waiting to watch them create the product in person because the seller didn’t use a PO box when sending out the orders.
By the way, if you want to learn how to sell on Etsy, click here.
Giving your home address to people tells them where they can reach you when you are at your most vulnerable.
Any reasonable-minded person would know how dangerous that is.
Please, keep yourself safe and try not to post pictures of yourself standing on the outside of your house, believe me, some people would take the time to track you down by going down every street in the county you live in on Google Maps.
There are a lot more people with too much time on their hands than you would think.
And if you are a blogger or owns a business that sends out emails, you’ll need a physical address on every emails to comply to the CAN-SPAM act, don’t use your real address if you don’t have an office.
You can use a virtual office that has a physical address (ex. Viabox), a PO box, address of a co-working space address.
Viabox would send you any physical mails arrived at their physical address that is addressed to your business. The laws may be changing soon so it’s best to use a PO box.
A PO box typically won’t cost you more than $100 per year to use. You will likely not receive any physical mails.
Some people have even revealed that they don’t use a real PO box because no one check if you actually own the PO box and you won’t get any mails anyway.
So what they do is they go to their postal office, look up an example PO box address and use it for their business.
I’m not telling you what to do. I’m simply stating what I’ve seen other people do. You’re responsible for what address you put on your business emails.
6. Your phone service provider
The reason you don’t want to tell the world which phone service provider you use is to avoid people from getting your personal details.
Any person can call the phone service provider and ask for personal details associated with your number by pretending to be your assistant.
You would think that they would follow a strict protocol to confirm your identity first but no, they wouldn’t necessarily do so.
With good enough acting, scammers and stalkers can get your info by posing as someone else on your behalf.
In some cases, they can add a second device and track your every move.
This is how some stalkers are able to track someone down despite them moving across the country.
7. When exactly you’ll go on vacation
Let me tell you a story of a woman who landed herself a divorce paper from her husband because her husband begged her not to share every detail of their lives with the world but she wouldn’t listen.
She told the whole world on social media exactly when they’ll be leaving and when they’ll return. Upon returning, all their stuff is gone.
How did the thieves know where they live? Well, it’s on her Facebook!
This is one of the reasons why some vloggers wouldn’t release their videos immediately.
It’s not just because it takes time to edit the videos but because they are taking safety precautions against those who may want to cause them harm.
8. Your children’s personal details
I know, your children are adorable and you want the whole world to see how cute they are.
But first of all, at that age, they really can’t consent to have their pictures taken and shared with the whole world.
Second of all, these children will grow up and realize their info such as their date of birth, hobbies, likes, dislikes, where they lived, where they grew up, how many siblings they have, etc have been public knowledge against their will for their whole lives.
This may mean that some of their accounts may not be secure. Their peers may be able to access their school accounts easily because they know their date of birth.
There are also risks of bullying because their peers can see videos of them potty training.
Imagine going on a date with someone and they already know about your whole life story without you having to tell them because they’ve seen every stage of our growing up online.
9. Your IP address
If you don’t know your IP address, you can type in “what is my IP” into Google and it’ll show you.
Your IP address can be used to track you down and identify you. Someone can hack your device if they know your IP address.
This is not something you should share with anyone online or offline.
10. Personal details of your friends and family
Your friends and family did not consent to have their lives shared with the whole world.
You don’t have the right to reveal that your sister had a miscarriage, or post a picture of your dad’s weird-looking mole on the internet, or reveal that your friend broke up with her boyfriend.
These are personal details that if someone wants to share, they would and it’s just not yours to tell.
If you aren’t sure whether you can talk about something, then don’t. You can never unsay things, especially on the internet where everything is recorded.
11. Your next big plan
Keep your plans private. Telling people about your big plan can give you a sense of accomplishment before you actually achieve your goals. That feeling will prevent you from working harder.
When you tell someone your next move, you also run the risk of them trying to prevent you from succeeding.
I absolutely hate it when someone anxiously asks me about my grade because they worry they didn’t “win”.
Or when someone becomes frustrated at the sound of me flipping books or typing something in a library (you know, basically means I’m working instead of procrastinating).
I’ve met plenty of people who get upset at me because I’m making progress in something. In a lot of those cases, they aren’t even doing the same thing I am doing. We aren’t even competing for the same thing!
People don’t always want the best for you. You have to do the best for yourself by keeping your goals and plans private.
You can read an article on why you should keep your plans private here. I got more valid reasons.
12. Certain cookies
Depending on the browser you use, you may want to check for the cookies setting to make sure you are protecting your data and privacy.
For instance, in Google chrome, under ‘setting’, ‘privacy and security’, you can find the option to ‘block third-party cookies’.
Cookies are used so certain sites can function and they may note down your user habits for their own usage. This may involve the data about which pages you visited on the website, which products you had in your shopping cart but didn’t purchase, etc.
It’s best not to allow all cookies. You can see from the screenshot that you can block third-party cookies instead of allowing all cookies.
You can also ask the sites to clear all cookies when you exit the browser by clicking on the option from the list.
There’s also a ‘do not track’ request that you can select. Some websites track which websites you visit so they can study your user behavior.
Most websites (including HelloMoneyTree) don’t track your subsequent website visits and don’t ask for more cookies than the bare minimum (ie. which pages you visited), but there are places such as Facebook who does (even after you logged out).
You can always make sure to select the ‘clear cookies and site data when you close all windows’ option on Chrome. So when you close down all the tabs, the cookies will reset.
13. App permissions
You may not know this but if you permit an app to access your camera and microphone, developers and app owners can record you and take pictures of you through your camera without you knowing.
Anyone can make an app and put it up on the App Store and once you permit them access to your camera, what’s to say they won’t remotely monitor what you’re up to?
This is why you should always cover your phone camera with a sticker and refuse permission once you’re done using the app.
When you need those functions again, you can turn them on again.
You want to go to your phone setting and click on the app you want to audit.
Once you are there, you may see they ask you for several permissions including location, contacts, photos, microphone, camera, etc.
For obvious reasons, your location should be off unless you absolutely need it.
You don’t need to share your contacts with anyone.
Only permit the app to access selected photos. Otherwise, they’d see all your photos and videos in your Photos app.
Microphone and camera should of course be off unless you are using them.
You may think that it’s illegal to download pictures from someone’s Photos app, take pictures, film someone, or stalk someone through their phones but it’s technically legal as long as you have agreed to give them access to your camera, microphone, location, and anything else.
You should make sure to do a daily check of app permissions so you can keep your private life out of the eyes of developers and owners of such apps.
14. Extension permissions
If you use Chrome, you may find this puzzle symbol in the top right corner. Click on ‘manage extensions’ at the bottom of the pop-up.
This is what you would see next.
Click on the ‘details’ button on the extension you want to view. You want to go through the following page to see anything you may not like.
What is alarming is that some extensions do require you to permit them to read your browsing history. Yes, that is the browsing of every website you visited from your browser, not just the pages you visited on their website.
I don’t know about you but I do not want anyone reading my browsing history. All this data can be assessed by humans not just robots and machines. The data can also be sold to third parties who want arrange more personalized ads. Some data can even be leaked to the dark web.
Imagine someone somewhere, having access to all pictures and videos on your phone, livestream you in real time, see all your contacts, hear private conversations you have with your loved ones, see all your search history, and know where you’ve been to at which point in time.
You can limit the extension to only read and change your data on specific websites only.
However, even so, the line is unclear. Is the permission for when you install the extension therefore, they’d read your browsing history on all websites you visit? Of all the websites they see you browse they then be able to read and change data on the site you allowed?
For this reason, it’s best to create a separate Chrome profile for when you need to use certain extensions. The extension is limited to the Chrome profile you are using at the time and not to all others.
You can add another Chrome profile by clicking on profile on the top right corner and clicking ‘add’, on the bottom of the pop-up.
15. Google drive authorization
Go to your Google Drive and on the top right corner, find the settings button.
You should see the following after clicking on settings.
Under ‘manage apps’ you can see all the apps that are installed by default and all the apps you allowed access to your Google drive.
When you allow access, companies will be able to read and see everything on your Google drive. You can always remove their access here by clicking on ‘options’.
It’s best not to allow any third party to access your Google Drive.
When given the options to log in via your Google account or via email, always choose email (even if it’s Gmail) so you don’t give unnecessary details to the websites you visit.
Remember, there are real humans behind all permissions you allow and they can read and download anything from their end without your knowledge and it’d be perfectly legal as you have agreed to allow access.
16. Installation permissions
First of all, don’t install anything on your computer that is fishy or suspicious. Always check the reviews first. And if you can, go to forums to do more research before you install anything.
When you install anything on your computer, make sure they are accessing the document folder on your computer and not your desktop folder as that may give someone a full view of items on your desktop otherwise.
Once you allow software and apps to access your document folder, make sure to not put anything sensitive in the folder.
17. Home security camera permissions
Do you have security cameras in your home? Because if you do, you may want to check who has permission to the footage.
Workers who installed your security camera can in theory add themselves as an admin and watch you through your home security cameras.
This is something many families have found out too late after years. If you got security cameras in your home, especially if it’s inside your home, you should take extra care to make sure no suspicious accounts are linked to your security system.
Keep in mind, that even if you have checked the security camera permissions, hackers may still access your camera remotely without you knowing.
It’s in my opinion, unless necessary, don’t install security cameras inside your home, or, you can turn off the camera when you don’t need it.
18. Details of your whole life?
I know most people want the whole world to stay connected to them for their whole lives but for me, that would be an absolute nightmare.
I want to stay unknown to the world. I don’t want just anyone to have the ability to know what I’m up to for the rest of my life.
I shudder at the thought of peers I shared a class with 10 years ago creep up my Instagram and realize I live in Magicland, have 500 kids, and have been married since 2022 to a man called Micky Mouse (No, I don’t want to marry Micky Mouse).
I know this sounds weird in a world where everyone has essentially a profile of themselves on the internet that identifies them which anyone can have a look through. A profile that documents every major moment of their entire lives…
At a time in history where most seeks constant attention I just want the tranquility that can only be found in a private life.
Unless I choose to have someone in my life, I want no one else to know more than they need to about me.
Before you reveal everything about yourself to the whole world, think about how permanent everything is.
If you die suddenly, everything about you that is public right now would stay public forever.
You can never go, “Oh, let me just quickly delete that picture and that comment because that isn’t who I am anymore”. No, you’d be dead!
All your future descendants (if you have kids), relatives, and everyone else in the world alive right now or will be alive in the future will have access to it for the rest of time.
I don’t know about you but that is a scary thought. Some people may argue that “Well, I’d be dead why would I care?” and that is a fair point but it’s the lack of control over your own content for the rest of time that scares me.
Final thought
What do you think? Is there anything else we should keep private? Tell me down below!
