How many times have we heard it – the more information you provide online, the easier it is for a company to serve you. Of course, that data is valuable to companies and websites for many other reasons as well – and what they do with that data can expose your home address and other private content to marketers, and to other entities that won’t care very much about protecting it.
The latest tech convenience to merit closer scrutiny is chatbots. They seem so polite and friendly as they ask how they can help you, and people tend to respond more favorably to the conversational tone they offer. That’s why search engines like Google and Bing encourage users to try them. But every time you answer one of their questions, they collect that data, including your IP address, home address, email address, and phone number.
Of course, they’ll pledge to not share information with third parties, while their privacy policies allow them to use data for serving targeted advertising to users. And those companies may also sell or share it – or they’ll get hacked and that data will become available to everyone.
What Can You Do?
The best way to limit the amount of data chatbots collects is to use a VPN (Virtual Private Network) to mask your IP address, as that is the information that opens doors to the rest of your private content. With a VPN you can surf the Web through a private and secure network, while your personal data remains inaccessible to those trying to obtain it.
This is why we provide NordVPN to our IronWall360 Premium clients and offer this service as an add-on for our standard subscribers. We believe NordVPN is the best option available, and the only one we fully trust for the security of our clients.
Our IronWall360 Premium service also includes a VoIP (or virtual) phone number, to be used in place of your cell phone number or landline. Your cell number is one of the most prized pieces of data that brokers covet because very few people will ever change that number. By using a VoIP number instead, you keep that information safe.
