Just had an article coming into my inbox that moved my senses! Businesses Are Losing The Right To Ask For Customer ZIP Codes by Dominic Green.

How many times where you asked at the checkout lanes for either our zip codes or phone number at the end of the transaction and how many times did we just raddle the information out without thinking?

Several states like California and now the Massachusetts make it a federal privacy violation to collect shopper’s personal information like the phone number or a zip code.

This now leads me to the question how we keep any information, personal and private, under lock and key. Most of us deal with our and our clients personal information on our lap tops, tables and smart phones on a daily bases. How we secure this information is becoming more and more important in this age of connectivity.

Most of the Cybercriminals are using our connectivity to gain our trust and phish for our and our client’s information through twat is called social engineering. In many cases you are contacted via email and given a deal that sounds too good to be true or you are asked to donate after a disaster. Another could be from “your financial institution” threatening the closure of your account. The lottery constantly tells us we have one a certain amount of money and we have to click on link ABC to claim it. These are a few I can think of right now but I know there are more.

When you not sure that the email you have received is a true or a phishing email Microsoft has a great article on how to spot the fake. When you are still not sure if it is a true email you might call the person to find out if they have send you this message, don’t click on the link inside the email and just delete it when you still not sure.

I did this just last week and we found out that this personas smart phone was hacked.