Two Simple Steps to Protect Your Email Address and Phone #

by: James Carpenter, CISM, CISSP, CISA, MBA

     There are two pieces of information about you that, if they get out of control, your life starts getting out of control. Those two pieces of information are your email address and your phone number. What led me to devise a solution which controls these two data points in my life was the increasing propagation of interactions on the internet which require an email address, phone #, or other contact information to "continue" to use their service. Anytime I see the word "Free" I just laugh because nothing is free. Somehow, some way, when you give up your information - you will be contacted! There will be a cost! Therefore, I was always hesitant about giving out my email and phone # because I knew, once it was out, it was out. There was no turning back. These two simple solutions are useful when submitting resumes, filling out surveys, entering your contact information into drawings, or other situations where you don't want to give out your real information. Heck, I could even see it work great for the dating scene! For the record, I don't think I invented any of this; however, when I tell people about it, I see light bulbs going off - I see excitement - so I'm sharing it with you today.

Protecting your email

    The solution for your email is to first create or have a "home" email. This email account is your "real" email account. You've probably already got one. It's the email you use everyday. For me, this is a Gmail account but it can be any account you want. I like the idea of your real email account being an account with one of the big free email providers because you can count on it to always be available from anywhere. 

    What's great about this is, if you are unsure about giving your email out, for example when you post a resume on a public resume site, you can make up an email address for that particular scenario. If your name was Jane Doe, you could create one called Jane.D@yourdomain.us and post your resume with confidence. 

Here's some benefits:

1. If you start getting spam, you'll know right away where the compromise of your email address came from because you created that email for that particular instance.

2. You can cut all emails to that address off in one fell swoop! Simply log into your domain site and build a rule to kill emails destined for that address.

3. Best of all, by owning a domain, you have portability across your internet providers with a custom domain name you created. If you move or switch internet providers, you can keep your custom email addresses.

Protecting your phone #

    I use my cell phone for EVERYTHING! I really don't want my cell# getting out. You can do the same thing for your phone # that you can with email addresses - abstract your real phone number with a proxy number. There are probably many services that offer this but I personally use Google Voice. Services such as these allow you to obtain a free phone # and forward all calls and texts to your real phone. You no longer have to give out your real phone #. You can, ironically, find all these services and the Google Voice service by using Google. Search "Google Voice" or "Alternatives to Google Voice". 

About Privacy

    It is critical that you know by using Gmail, or Google Voice or any other "free" service that nothing is "free". There is a privacy impact; that I believe it is "impersonal" in nature. Impersonal in the sense that, no person is involved; rather, machines. Free services scan your emails and your voice-mails and extract meaning for commercial purposes. The best example I can give is this; If you send and receive a lot of emails related to playing chess, don't be surprised if the advertisements running in your email web browser start showing the latest chessboards or custom chess pieces. I'm not so sure about voice-mail; however, I do know that certain providers can translate your voice mails into text and SMS the message to you. While this is quite fascinating, it is a clear indication of voice recognition technology at work and once one can convert voice to text one can then analyze for commercial purposes, i.e. advertisements. My personal position on this is - it's worth the trade-off. There's no human reading my inbox or listening to my voice-mails and even if they were, they would immediate hang up when they found out I was always talking about the latest crystal chess pieces available. (Maybe I'll write a future article entitled "Avoid privacy problems by having a boring life"). I digress...

Closing

    The world is becoming increasingly data driven. Corporations are seeking every ounce of data they can get to extract value. This great collection of data is often referred to as "big data". It is an appropriate label because the idea is to get as much data about you (and me) as possible to market effectively or achieve some other purpose (hopefully not nefarious!) This will not change and will only increase as we enter into this new age of data driven decision making and a data driven economy. The saavy among us will therefore sieze ownership of our information and move into the age with an attitude that recognizes the value of our personal data and creates efficient mechanisms to best protect it; either by not giving it out, or by abstracting it to those who would otherwise take it for "free". Using these "free" services to your advantage in this manner creates a symbiotic relationship which benefits both parties. It doesn't have to be a one way street.