# Privacy footprint How concerned should we be about our privacy online? Is there anything we can do to protect it? Online privacy is definitely something we should be worried about these days. Our personal data is being collected by various companies and can be used for all sorts of reasons, like targeted ads or even being misused by bad people. Rich Haridy (2019) points out that although Facebook might not be listening to our conversations secretly, they still gather loads of info about us to create super detailed profiles. So, how can we protect our privacy? Here are some simple steps we can take: * Be careful about what personal info you share online. * Tweak your social media privacy settings to control who sees your stuff. * Use strong, unique passwords for all your accounts. * Get a VPN to keep your browsing data private. * Clean up your cookies and browsing history regularly. * Install good security software to keep your devices safe from threats. In conclusion, being concerned about online privacy is totally normal, and we should do our best to protect our personal information. By following these tips, we can take control of our online presence and stay safer in the digital world. --- ## Required reading ![Maltego findings](https://i.imgur.com/DRm8ybQ.png) *Results from a quick search on Maltego* The above photo is from the application Maltego which is a OSINT tool that helps explore publically available information and graphs it in a visual way. Whilst the information shown can also be found just by googling the information it helps organise things if perhaps you are targetting a business with multiple people. The information I provided it was my name, email addresses and phone number. ![Map data](https://i.imgur.com/HzNxkyN.jpg) *A Saturday that I did a lot of travelling around Boston* The above photo is a Saturday where I did a lot of moving around the city of Boston. I'm often interested in my tracking data and do regularly check things like my google mapping, I am aware of the data that is stored and shared but I'm not too concerned as I feel like my sensitive data is secure enough.