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Today 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.

It is your choice whether to submit a comment. If you do, you must create a user name, or we will not post your comment. The Federal Trade Commission Act authorizes this information collection for purposes of managing online comments. Comments and user names are part of the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) public records system, and user names also are part of the FTC’s computer user records system. We may routinely use these records as described in the FTC’s Privacy Act system notices. For more information on how the FTC handles information that we collect, please read our privacy policy.

The purpose of this blog and its comments section is to inform readers about Federal Trade Commission activity, and share information to help them avoid, report, and recover from fraud, scams, and bad business practices. Your thoughts, ideas, and concerns are welcome, and we encourage comments. But keep in mind, this is a moderated blog. We review all comments before they are posted, and we won’t post comments that don’t comply with our commenting policy. We expect commenters to treat each other and the blog writers with respect.

  • We won’t post off-topic comments, repeated identical comments, or comments that include sales pitches or promotions.
  • We won’t post comments that include vulgar messages, personal attacks by name, or offensive terms that target specific people or groups.
  • We won’t post threats, defamatory statements, or suggestions or encouragement of illegal activity.
  • We won’t post comments that include personal information, like Social Security numbers, account numbers, home addresses, and email addresses. To file a detailed report about a scam, go to ReportFraud.ftc.gov.

We don't edit comments to remove objectionable content, so please ensure that your comment contains none of the above. The comments posted on this blog become part of the public domain. To protect your privacy and the privacy of other people, please do not include personal information. Opinions in comments that appear in this blog belong to the individuals who expressed them. They do not belong to or represent views of the Federal Trade Commission.

Japer
January 28, 2021
The police will not investigate a cellphone "SIM card take over" hijacking because the DA will not prosecute unless it is for a substantial amount of money, despite the months of trouble and fallout that ensues. What can you do about this?
Phona
January 28, 2021
the information you provide to us is very helpful Thank You
comment
January 29, 2021
How does the FTC protect privacy? What specific FTC programs address privacy? What is the future of privacy?
angelguerrero44
January 30, 2021
How does an app update help to protect better my privacy?