National Data Privacy Day

January 28th is National Data Privacy Day, when many organizations and government agencies, including the FTC, join together to raise awareness about privacy issues and to offer tips and information. As more and more of our devices are connected and share information about us, privacy is increasingly important.

There are things you can do to help protect your privacy and limit how you share your information with others. National Data Privacy Day is the perfect time to review some of those steps you can take:

1. Know what’s on your device. Do an inventory of all the applications that are on your devices. Consider deleting what you don’t use.
2. Check the privacy settings. It’s a good idea to check the privacy settings of apps, devices, and online accounts periodically. You could, for example, review privacy settings when you get a notice from a company telling you that their privacy policies have changed.
3. Make sure any software and applications are up to date. This includes your apps, web browsers, and operating systems. Set updates to happen automatically.
4. Check the security of your home router. Make sure you’re using a router that has WPA2 or WPA3 encryption to protect the information you share over your wireless network. Public Wi-Fi is not secure, so take precautions if you need to use a public Wi-Fi hotspot.

Check out the FTC’s resources on privacy and online security for more tips and information. You can also follow the conversation on social media by searching the hashtag #DataPrivacyDay.

If you own a business, you can find information on how to protect your customers’ and employees’ privacy in this blog series.