Welcome to Cybersecurity in 31 Days. I’m Malan Faya, your host. Today is Day 5. To view previous posts, click here.

I read somewhere that in the good old days, people get mad when you access their diaries without their consent. But today, people actually get mad when they share everything about their private lives on social media and no one reads them. Is the Internet the best place to share everything? Think again.

The Internet, they say, never forgets. Any information that you share through the Internet cannot be completely deleted. This includes the audio, photos, words, and videos you share on social media platforms such as Facebook, Snapchat etc. They may claim that your information is deleted when you click the delete button, but this is not completely true. The Internet does not work that way.

If anybody wants to know anything about you, the right way to get any information about you would be through Google. Google, the dominant number-one search engine, is a key tool for a social engineering as hackers find it useful in unearthing information about their targets on the Internet.

So you need to be careful with how much personal information you reveal online. Sharing your address, birthday, telephone number, travel details, workplace address, and other personal information can mean you are at a greater risk of harassment, identity theft, or stalking.

Any personal information that you share online could be stored and distributed by another person without your consent.

Never share online anything you don’t want everyone to see.

Remember, the Internet never forgets.