5 ways the data you fill online can be (Mis) used by websites

Is this common for you to get unwanted calls? Every Time we get those calls when we are in middle of something. Very next question in our mind is how these people find our contact details? How? Did you enter your contact details somewhere? May be online. In our fast moving life its very difficult to avoid our surfing.

Its very often that we enter our contact details online to receive an update or to download a free e-book or may be to get basic registration on any website. But we need to be careful because this may not be limited to e-mail and contact details only. Here we will see how our information can be mis used by these websites.

1) Selling our contact details: We all understand that there is some websites deal in database. But surprisingly some other websites whose main business is something else are also doing the same thing. At our website www.tutorcity.in we receive so many phone calls asking for database of teachers or students. Let me make it very clear here. We never ever share or sell contact details of either students or teachers to any third party.

Surprisingly when we reply in negative they treat us like we are rude and tell us that so many other websites are already doing that. Let me make it clear no website have right to sell their database like this. This is cheating with the users because they had given you their contact details for something else. That’s the reason at www.tutorcity.in we follow this policy very strictly.

Please make it sure before entering your contact details that they are not sold to any third parties.

2) Make your contact details visible to everyone: Well if you are a business person this may help you or you can assume it will help you. But receiving so many useless phone calls from unwanted sellers is irritating and it kills your time. Again at www.tutorcity.in we don’t even provide the contact details of a tutor to student till they post their learning need matching to the profile of that particular tutor. How can you rely an stranger.

Once I registered on a website and drop my number and very soon was consumed totally by unwanted phone calls. May be one or two of them were customers but all of other were insurance or share market brokers selling some high commission product. Never ever share your address and PAN like details on these kind of websites.

I guess even on B2C portals your details should be visible only after understanding the needs of customer and that too on the basis of perfect match. Soon we are going to launch the same thing on our first services marketplace.( Beta version will be there very soon).

3) Allow downloading of pics uploaded: As we all know from most of the websites we can download the pics uploaded there. Those pics can also be misused. Earlier I was also used to take it very lightly but then I came to some real life cases. Someone may create another account of you by some other name and then can keep posting your pics. They can make friends using your pics. Like if you are beautiful boys can be easily added into friends list. Then a Facebook profile is very powerful.

People fall in love with them and also commit suicide for that love. I recently saw this in a crime patrol episode. They may make friends and may call them at any place or may be indulged in adult talks and think if those people know you indirectly they will think that you are doing that.

Creating profiles on adult sites is another misuse. Still if sometimes that happens with you. Don’t feel ashamed and inform police ASAP be bold at that time.

4) Start sending spam mails: Some website collects your data and as soon as they find your e-mail ID they start sending spam mails. Let me make it clear Google hate spamming and it is a rule that every mail sent in bulk should have a link to unsubscribe from that mailing list. You can use it and unsubscribe. If you receive those unwanted mails into your inbox you can click on mark spam and they won’t bother you anymore.

5) Ask you to login via Facebook, twitter or Gmail and copy your entire address book: This is very common tool for websites to collect data base. They will lure you with some freebees and will ask you to login and all of us are lazy to fill registration form. They already know that so they will ask you to login via Facebook or twitter or Gmail and then there will be condition that they will access your address book. Then they start sending spam mails to all of those e-mails in your address book. You may be okay with that but also remember that you are also there in address book of so many people. Try to avoid that, take a sec and register yourself.

Apart from that we should be careful while making online payment. If you are dealing with some staff than take care to make payment via company’s website link only and not to any other account.

Hope this will help you.
Thanks.