Tips for individuals

Value your personal information

Your personal information reveals who you are, what you do and what you believe. It’s valuable. Protect it.

Check before you share

Make sure you trust who you share your information with. Check the organisation or person is who they say they are and has a good reputation. If it looks suspicious, don’t risk it.

Read privacy policies

Check that the privacy practices of the organisations that you deal with stack up. A good place to start is by reading their privacy policy.

Only provide your information if you understand and are comfortable with how and where it’s going to be used and who it’s going to be shared with.

Protect your accounts

Use multi-factor authentication and strong passphrases to protect your accounts.

Passwords are so last year. Passphrases are made up of 4 or more random words making them longer than a traditional password. This makes them harder to guess but easy to remember.

Protect your devices

Be sure to update your devices and applications to fix issues and address new security concerns.

Set up and perform regular backups so you don’t lose your personal information if something goes wrong.

Update your privacy settings

Many websites, apps and devices share your personal information by default. Check if you are sharing any information that you’d rather keep private.

Consider limiting location tracking, deleting or not accepting cookies and choosing your advertising preferences.

Clean up your trail

Destroy personal information before throwing it out and wipe data from old devices. The same applies online – make sure you delete accounts and emails you no longer need.

Think before your share

Draw boundaries between what you share publicly and with those you trust. Consider making your social media accounts private. Always question why you are being asked for information.

Make sure friends and family are happy to be tagged in posts.

Act quickly

Sometimes things go wrong. If your privacy is breached, act quickly to reduce your risk of harm. Steps you can take include changing your passphrases, watching out for scams and checking your accounts for suspicious activity.

Talk about privacy

Talk about privacy with your friends and family, and especially children. It’s essential young people understand how important their privacy is as soon as they start using digital devices and going online.