With the summer months upon us, friends, families, and even business owners are thinking about how to make the most of downtime. traveling is at an all-time high and is high up on many bucket lists for people all over the world. If you are doing some traveling this summer, take some precautions to ensure your property and information stay safely in your possession. The odds can be stacked against you that your identification ends up as someone else’s travel souvenir this summer. Here’s how you can keep your information safe while traveling.
Do a Spot Check
Before you head out on your travels this summer, take a few minutes to check over your digital devices. Look for apps or notes on your phone that may contain personal information that you wouldn’t want people to have access to if they were to pick up your phone. As a secondary mode of protection, ensure that your phone or digital device is locked with a password, passcode, or if your device allows, a digital fingerprint. You might lose your property, but you won’t lose your information.
Consider More Than One Mode of Authentication
If, for some reason, you opt not to have a password or passcode on your digital devices, consider a multi-factor authentication system. The benefits of multi-factor authentication ensures that a lucky guess doesn’t cost you all your vital information. These services provide peace of mind because they require the user of the digital device to confirm more than one kind of information, location, transaction, number, person, or event before allowing access.
Back-up Your Information
Before you travel, make sure you are connected to the Cloud or another online service that allows you to back up your information. While this may not be as important for your digital devices, such as smartphones, it will be important to do this for your laptops or any other electronic devices that contain high levels of information and downloads. But don’t just back up your information: use a secure database or storage system to ensure that your information is not only being backed up, but also stored safely.
Don’t Automate Information Storage
Another good rule to follow when traveling is that you shouldn’t allow your apps to store your credit card information. Sure, it’s convenient, but it’s easy for people who find themselves in possession of your digital devices to get into an app and get the information for themselves. The convenience of saving yourself a few seconds on every transaction or purchase online can be greatly overshadowed by the cost of losing your credit card information and being responsible for thousands of dollars worth of charges on your phone.
When it comes to travel, all it takes is a little insight and forethought to keep your information safe. You can’t predict everything that will happen, and certainly digital devices make traveling easier than ever, but be cautious about what information you are walking around with on your phone. It only takes a second to lose your phone and go from a fun vacation into a nightmare.
