Identifying PII: What Qualifies as Personal Information?

 

 

 

Do you recall how often websites, mobile apps, or someone ask for your personal info? We are asked countless times, right? It's common for both online and offline services to request personal details before granting access to their services. I believe legit companies' intentions are good, they just follow protocols or they just want to send you a promotional email in the future. But be cautious, as scammers could be monitoring our actions, waiting for us to unintentionally share information that they can exploit for malicious purposes.

 

In today's world, with identity theft and scams becoming more common than bank robbery, we often feel compelled to share our personal information without a choice due to social norms or pressure from businesses.

 

 

It's essential to learn how to protect our Personally Identifiable Information (PII). Personally Identifiable Information or PII refers to data that can uniquely identify individuals, like unique identifying information, and may include:

 

 

1. Personal details: This includes information like names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, social security numbers, passport numbers, driver's license numbers, and similar data.

2. Financial information: This includes details such as bank account numbers, credit card numbers, and records of financial transactions.

3. Biometric data: This includes unique characteristics like fingerprints, facial recognition data, iris scans, and other physical or behavioral traits that can identify individuals.

4. Employment information: This includes employee identification numbers, job titles, work addresses, and other job-related data.

5. Health information: This includes medical records, health insurance information, and other data related to a person's health.

6. Online identifiers: This includes data like IP addresses, usernames, passwords, and other online account information that can be used to identify individuals.

7. Geolocation data: This includes information like GPS coordinates, geotags in photos, and other location-based data that can reveal an individual's whereabouts.

 

 

 

Learn effective ways to safeguard your personally identifiable information (PII) and prevent identity theft. Read more. 

Protecting Your Identity and Personal Info 

 

With our new (and FREE!) Identity Protection tool, you can: 

• Check to see if your data (email address, phone number, password, social media) has been exposed in a leak.
• Secure your social media accounts with our Social Media Account Monitoring tool, with which you’ll receive a personal report.
• Receive the strongest tough-to-hack password suggestions from our advanced AI. 

 

It is also recommended to have reliable cybersecurity protection.

 

 

If you liked or found this article helpful, please share it with your friends and family to help ensure online community security. You can also show support by clicking the LIKE button below. Thank you!