It’s great to see positive change for online privacy happen on a political level. At the same time, the general public seems to hold their online personal boundaries differently from their real life.
Would you say it’s pretty much common sense to not leave your house keys blatantly hanging on your mailbox? Yet so many of us do the digital equivalent of that everyday – leaving online accounts logged in when you’re not using them. Actually, forget the keys. Staying logged into your idle accounts is more like leaving your front door wide open.
When you leave your account logged in when you’re not using it, you give hackers an easy access to your social profiles, bank accounts… you name it. Even if you use one-step login, that can still put you at risk since the site is storing your password for you.
And thanks to all the recent data breaches, you know a company’s customer data can be far from invincible. We’ve already seen what those up-to-no-good hackers are capable of. There’s no reason for you to help make their job easier.
