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Top Online Privacy Concerns for Small Businesses

Top Online Privacy Concerns for Small Businesses

How does your small business deal with concerns about online privacy breaches? How do you deal with these risks as a business owner, and how do you allay the concerns of your customers and potential customers? Do you have a strategy in place that can help you reach your target market without gaining excessive access to their accounts, leaving cookies or their computers, or using their aggregate data patterns to hunt them down in the social media wilderness?

 

According to a recent survey conducted by IT World, here are some of the top online security concerns of small business owners and IT managers:

 

1. Problems with cookies. Allowing them to proliferate and allowing them to alienate online customers are both concerns.

 

2. Allowing outside access to customer accounts as a result of weak password controls. Most business owners and site managers make a strong effort to keep client passwords effective. How do you handle this issue?

 

3. Mobile devices that store location data, which then betrays clients, site visitors, or employees. As with the other concerns on the list, this can undermine the interests of both business owners and customers.

 

4. Social media photo tags. Tags can betray information about a photo’s owner or subject that neither of the two may be able to control.

 

5. Online services that can fall under the scanning devices of federal and police agencies. Even though most small business owners are legitimate and law abiding, concerns about the reach of government agencies can still strike a chord.

 

For the sake of your personal data and the security of your business, it may be wise to visit your Google Account Dashboard and clear away some the information that may be stored there and accessible to eyes other than your own. Consider revoking the access to your account that you may have granted to outside websites. And while you’re at it, delete your browsing history, YouTube views, and Gmail chat history. For more information on how to keep your personal and business accounts better protected from privacy invasion, reach out to the small business IT staffing experts at Techneeds.