Cyber Security Tip ST05-013
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.
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
websites. 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; 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 information – once
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.
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Authors: Mindi McDowell, Matt Lytle, Jason Rafail
__________________________________________________________
Produced 2005 by US-CERT, a government organization.
Note: This tip was previously published and is being
re-distributed to increase awareness.
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