Online Protection: Why Read Terms and Conditions before Submnitting Personal Information

Hi there Job Seekers,

I hope you are all well and slowly winding down as the year draws to an end.

As much as I’d like to say I am, sadly a Guru’s job is never done and in fact on contraire’ this time of year things always tend to heat up on my side.

None the less, the festive season always promises positivity and at best good company with those you love so I hope you are all finding your little piece (peace) of heaven as we wrap the year up.

A week or so ago I posted a piece about Jobs becoming the first member of the IAEWS, the International Association of Employment Websites. As mentioned the IAEWS is an organisation that protects promotes and directs the operation of job portals and job boards and ensures the integrity of such services is maintained.

In other words users of the Jobs.co.za website are protected at all times according to the IAEWS code of ethics that Jobs.co.za adhere to in terms of user confidentiality (passwords and user name protection), fair and just operation of the website, transparent and open operation of the website, self regulation and providing services to users with the highest level of responsibility and integrity.

Now you may be wondering, ok we get it, Jobs.co.za are now members of the IAEWS and I’m safe and well protected and you’d be correct in saying so.

You are safe on Jobs, but are you safe on other websites that you register with?

Sometimes in trying to hurry along the registration process we encounter online, often we agree to terms and conditions of websites without ever even glancing at them while submitting personal details to companies we know nothing about

Bad idea…

When registering on any website we submit personal and highly confidential information (especially in the case of job portals).

By not reading the T’s and C’s of the website we register with, we essentially open ourselves up to having our personal information be taken advantage of and misused and compromised for commercial gain.

By all of the above I’m specifically referring to the selling of registered databases and fundamentally your personal and highly confidential information.

A common factor found circulating in the underbelly of the World Wide Web, is where website owners collect user data, compile elaborate and lucrative databases and proceed to sell this information to other website owners for a fortune.

So this might not sound so bad, but how would you like your personal information be registered in dodgy internet neighbourhoods, porn sites or alternatively sold companies who proceed to inundate you with spam.

My point is that while we have slipped into a comfortable second gear when using the internet, vigilance and attention to detail should always come first when submitting personal information online.

Research a site before being too quick to submit your personal information. Read their terms and conditions, if you don’t understand something in the T’s and C’s, Google it and look for further clarification and be 100 % confidant that your information will be protected.

Register with websites that are transparent about their affiliations, what they plan on doing with your personal information and how it will be gathered.

Only ever contribute your personal information to those sites you have paid some attention to in making sure that have your very best interests at heart.

I hope that I have enlightened you and at best made you aware of simple ways to protect yourself online and when registering on websites.

Your integrity is the most important thing you have to protect.

Once it is gone you can never get it back and while we like to think we live in a world of peace and love and community sadly there are a few people out there with other things on their mind than being “a nice guy”

Thanks for your time!

Peace out

Jo Blog

joblog@jobs.co.za

Friday, December 12th, 2008 at 11:13 am and is filed under General Jobs.co.za, JoBlog's Workplace, The Employment Times. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.