*GUEST BLOG* How to Create a Digital Persona to Protect Your Online Presence

By Bruce McIndoe, President and Founder of WorldAware

With great frequency these days, we hear about a major data breach of a popular online merchant or corporate behemoth such as Marriott, Macy’s, Delta, or Best Buy, and cringe. We wonder if we will get the dreaded “Sorry for the break-in, but we are offering you free credit monitoring for a year” email. Then, we wait to see if the credit card we used will be compromised and, after much hassle, we go through the process to cancel and get a new card.

We could avoid all of this by not purchasing things online, but that is both hard and impractical as more and more “brick and mortar” stores like Sears, Kmart, Toys ‘R’ Us, GAP and J.C. Penney shut down. 

We could just carry on, as we always have, and wait for the next data breach that leaks our personal information and deal with the fallout. 

What else can we do? We can be proactive rather than reactive. Don’t give these sites your real personal information. Create and use a digital persona, and you will never have to worry about your personal information again.

How You Lose Your Personal Information

To register and obtain a product or service through a web site, you are required to give the website your personal information such as your email, phone number, address, and credit card information. When the site gets hacked, this is the personal information that gets stolen. Criminals use this personal information and other information about you on the internet to recreate your real-world persona and pretend they are you! With this persona, they can play havoc with your life and cause you to spend untold hours dealing with the aftermath.

You can proactively fight back by creating a digital persona that mirrors your real-world persona. A digital persona is like having a covert identity when you go online. You NEVER give a site all your real-world persona information. You use your digital persona and common sense to thwart the hackers and criminals. Here is how it works.

Creating a Digital Persona

To create a digital persona, you need to create a mirror of your real-world persona. The table below summarizes what you need to do for all your critical real-world personal information.

Creating a Digital Personal Email Address

Creating a new email address is a very straightforward process for any service that provides a free email service such as Google’s Gmail, Yahoo! Mail or Microsoft Outlook.com. First, remember to create your digital persona phone number to support two-factor authentication and password recovery.

If you just need a temporary or perishable email address for one-time use like downloading a white paper or a website, use a service such as 10MinuteMail.com. These services provide you a temporary inbox that will self-destruct after 10 minutes. You can extend the use of the mailbox in 10-minute increments if you need to.

Tip: Don’t auto-forward messages from this account to your real-world account unless you want to deal with a lot of spam. Periodically, delete all the old messages. They should all be spam or old transaction messages. If you want to keep a message, manually forward it to your real-world email.

Creating a Digital Personal Phone Number

There are several online phone services that enable you to create a virtual phone number and link it to your real-world phone or phones. The one that we have used with great success is Google Voice. You can try other free virtual phone number or voice over IP (VOIP) services such as iNum and CallCentric. Skype and others can provide this capability as well, but for a fee.  You will want to make sure that the virtual phone number will support both traditional phone calls (POTS) and mobile texting. The mobile text is important for sites that want to text you a one-time access code in addition to your password.

Tip: If the service supports it, try to pick a phone number that you can easily remember. Use an obscure area code with lots of options for the last 7 digits. You really only need inbound call support. If you want to make calls on this number, you will typically have to pay a fee.

Creating a Digital Personal Credit Card Number

Many credit card providers, such as Citi, Bank of America and Capital One, provide you the ability to create a one-time use credit card number or virtual credit card number that can only be used for that transaction. This is great, but the process of using them can be cumbersome. Most browsers provide add-ons to be able to create these virtual credit card numbers easily when you are going through checkout on a site. There are online services, like Privacy.com, that can make the process easier and provide more features and options around the use of virtual credit cards to support recurring subscriptions (you specify the vendor, maximum amount, expiration) and can set up multiple funding sources. To use this service, you need to link the virtual credit card, which is more like a debit card, to a checking account. If you are not comfortable with using virtual credit cards, you can just open a credit card account specifically for online and other situations, like restaurants, where the number is potentially exposed. If it gets compromised, you just get a new card and pick up from there.

There are also digital wallet services such as PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Chase Pay that are supported widely and can be used to protect your real-world credit card(s). However, you do ultimately have to enter a username/password to use these services which can be stolen.

Tip: It is easier to pick one virtual credit card or digital wallet service and stick with it — possibly two if you are doing more sophisticated payment options with one.

Creating a Digital Persona Mailing Address

Traditionally, people have used a post office box service to have a fixed mailing address. However, a post office box requires you or someone to go and open the box to get the mail physically. In addition, many sites require a physical mailing address to a home or office and will not accept a post office box. Many options are available for creating a digital persona mailing address.

Want a Laguna Beach, CA or Wall Street address? Services like virtualpostmail.com and PhysicalAddress.com allow you to pick an address location and various service options for a monthly fee ranging from $7 to $15 per month. Typically, a basic service will receive mail and packages and scan the outside of the item. You will get a notification and look at the scans online. For each item, you will tell the service to destroy the item, scan the contents or forward the item to another address.

There are services like Viabox that charge no monthly fee. You only pay for shipping to get your package. However, do your research on these services; the reviews of these services are typically either excellent or “never use them.”

Tip: In the US and other countries, you must formally authorize a 3rd party to open your mail. In the US, you need to fill out a USPS Form 1583 and have it notarized.

Protecting your Real-World Name

It is generally against the law to use a false name with the intent to defraud someone. Defraud means to induce someone to surrender something of value relying on a misrepresentation. For many sites like FaceBook, using a false name violates its Terms of Service (ToS). However, if you are just trying to protect your identity, the use of a pseudonym generally is acceptable unless it violates the site ToS. Check the site and verify their terms.

Never provide fake name information where financial transactions are involved, such as selling goods on eBay or Amazon, opening a bank account or applying for a credit card or loan. This constitutes fraud, and the digital persona is intended to help you avoid being defrauded rather than becoming a criminal yourself.

Tip: As with all things on the internet, “there is an app for that.” If you are going to use a fake name, then use a service like Fake Name Generator (fakenamegenerator.com). You can specify your sex, country and your name set (heritage); the service will then generate a complete profile - name, address, height, weight, and much, much more.

Purge Your On-Line Real-World Personas

Once you have your new digital persona, you can systematically update your existing online profiles to your virtual personal information. This is also a good time to cancel and delete any services that you no longer use. There is no sense having your personal information sitting out there for someone to buy or trade when the company is sold or goes out of business. You should start with any sites that store your credit card information and replace it with your digital persona virtual credit card. This is also a good opportunity to update your password for the site. Think about using a password manager such as LastPass or Keeper as you go through this process. Using a tool like this can make life much easier than trying to remember your usernames/passwords for multiple sites or, worse, using the same passwords for all or most sites and/or writing them down.

Tip: Pick and use the same “clean” browser for all your online accounts and transactions. There is no sense having your access history, site cookies and possibly stored usernames/passwords in multiple browsers. Don’t use this browser to surf the web or access sites with which you are not familiar. You do not want malware or other hacks of your protected browser that may compromise data stored or entered. When using a password manager, always use multi-factor authentication and increase the length and complexity requirements of passwords to reduce the chance of a successful brute force attack. 

Once Your Digital Persona is Live – Relax but Be Vigilant

It goes without saying that anytime you interact with a new website registration or make online purchases, you will only want to use your new digital persona. Once you are comfortable using a digital persona, you can create multiple digital personas for different activities such as gaming sites, video & music services, and online purchasing.  By making an effort to remove your real-world persona information from the web, you can sit back and relax when the next cyber-attack happens.

Meet the WorldAware Team at BTS

Listen to Bruce McIndoe share additional personal protective measures for your travellers at one of two informational sessions: February 26 at 11am and February 27 at 11am. Learn more about WorldAware and set up your personalized session with our team of experts: See Schedule and register for FREE www.businesstravelshow.com

About WorldAware

WorldAware, Inc. provides intelligence-driven, integrated risk management solutions that enable multinational organizations to operate globally with confidence. WorldAware’s end-to-end, tailored solutions integrate world-class threat intelligence, innovative technology, and response services to help organizations avoid threats, mitigate risk and protect their people, assets, and reputation. Founded in 1999, WorldAware is a privately held company headquartered in Annapolis, US with offices in London, Cape Town, and Singapore. For more information, visit WorldAware.com.