Another tip in a series provided by the Offices of Information Systems & Computing and Audit, Compliance & Privacy

February is Data Privacy Month!

Data Privacy Day was January 28 and kicks off Data Privacy Month—February.

Now is an excellent time to recognize Data Privacy Month in ways that can be both practical and impactful for you!

Today’s environment is filled with networking and sharing on social media and through various apps. Here are some tips to consider for yourself and your colleagues when sharing or posting your information:

• Sharing Your Information with Apps and Websites

Understand how you are sharing information with social media platforms, apps and websites. Remember—not only are you sharing pictures with friends and family via social media, you are also sharing your personal information with the social media platform and potentially their third-party service providers. To learn how to control and limit your information sharing by configuring your privacy and security settings for specific social media platforms, go to https://staysafeonline.org/stay-safe-online/managing-your-privacy/manage-privacy-settings/

• Location Tracking

Your personal device, such as your smartphone or tablet, may be sharing your location data with apps and websites without your knowledge. Location sharing can be automatic once you download an app to your personal device. Some of these apps may be using your location data even when you are not accessing the app.

Find out if your device and apps are tracking your location at https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203033 for Apple devices and https://support.google.com/android/answer/6179507 for Android devices.

To learn more about how to protect Penn data as well as your own data, please visit Penn Privacy at http://www.upenn.edu/oacp/privacy/

For additional tips, see the One Step Ahead link on the Information Security website: https://www.isc.upenn.edu/security/news-alerts#One-Step-Ahead