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Guidelines for Publishing Information Online
Remember that the internet is a public resource. Avoid putting
anything online that you don't want the public to see or that you may
want to retract.
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Why is it important to remember that the internet is public?
Because the internet is so accessible and contains a wealth of
information, it has become a popular resource for communicating, for
researching topics, and for finding information about people. It may
seem less intimidating than actually interacting with other people
because there is a sense of anonymity. However, you are not really
anonymous when you are online, and it is just as easy for people to
find information about you as it is for you to find information about
them. Unfortunately, many people have become so familiar and
comfortable with the internet that they may adopt practices that make
them vulnerable. For example, although people are typically wary of
sharing personal information with strangers they meet on the street,
they may not hesitate to post that same information online. Once it is
online, it can be accessed by a world of strangers, and you have no
idea what they might do with that information.
What guidelines can you follow when publishing information on the
internet?
- View the internet as a novel, not a diary - Make sure you
are comfortable with anyone seeing the information you put
online. Expect that people you have never met will find your page;
even if you are keeping an online journal or blog, write it with the
expectation that it is available for public consumption. Some sites
may use passwords or other security restrictions to protect the
information, but these methods are not usually used for most web
sites. If you want the information to be private or restricted to a
small, select group of people, the internet is probably not the best
forum.
- Be careful what you advertise - In the past, it was
difficult to find information about people other than their phone
numbers or address. Now, an increasing amount of personal information
is available online, especially because people are creating personal
web pages with information about themselves. When deciding how much
information to reveal, realize that you are broadcasting it to the
world. Supplying your email address may increase the amount of spam
you receive (see Reducing Spam
for more information). Providing details about your hobbies, your job,
your family and friends, and your past may give attackers enough
information to perform a successful social engineering attack (see Avoiding Social
Engineering and Phishing Attacks for more information).
- Realize that you can't take it back - Once you publish
something online, it is available to other people and to search
engines. You can change or remove information after something has been
published, but it is possible that someone has already seen the
original version. Even if you try to remove the page(s) from the
internet, someone may have saved a copy of the page or used excerpts
in another source. Some search engines "cache" copies of web pages so
that they open faster; these cached copies may be available after a
web page has been deleted or altered. Some web browsers may also
maintain a cache of the web pages a user has visited, so the original
version may be stored in a temporary file on the user's
computer. Think about these implications before publishing
informationonce something is out there, you can't guarantee that
you can completely remove it.
As a general practice, let your common sense guide your decisions
about what to post online. Before you publish something on the
internet, determine what value it provides and consider the
implications of having the information available to the
public. Identity theft is an increasing problem, and the more
information an attacker can gather about you, the easier it is to
pretend to be you. Behave online the way you would behave in your
daily life, especially when it involves taking precautions to protect
yourself.
Authors: Mindi McDowell, Matt Lytle, Jason Rafail
Produced 2005 by US-CERT, a government organization. Terms of use
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Last
updated
June 25, 2008
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