Personal information is private and sensitive information about ourselves. Its safety should be treated seriously.

The online world constantly requires us to share our personal information, for instance, signing up for an email or social media accounts, or setting up an online delivery destination or online banking.

However, our online personal information is potentially open to abuse by people with bad intentions such as identity theft and unauthorised online transactions.

So, it is crucial for all online users to practice privacy control.

• Do not give away your personal information such as your full name, IC number, phone number, address, or bank account number to anyone except the authorities.
• Verify the request, even if it seems urgent. Call the company’s customer service number on the company's website to double check on the validity of the matter.
• Beware of the ‘fun’ sites that require your personal information as it could be operated by cybercriminals to steal victims’ information.
• Do not overshare. Refrain from posting too many photographs of yourself, especially inappropriate photos. Remember to switch off webcams after use.
• Location sharing is a feature that is available on most social media sites for users to ‘check-in’ to a particular location. While it is a great feature to record where you were, overusing this feature may attract stalkers as they can track your whereabouts.
• Manage and update your privacy settings so that only people whom you trust, like family and friends, can see what you post and share online.
• Before selling, disposing or giving away your old devices, make sure you wipe off all data, remove accounts, and perform factory reset. The hardware might still contain your personal data and other files. For PC, it is best to use a program that overwrites data multiple times to ensure a clean data removal.