Man travels across world to attack online friend, shot by girl’s mum | Tech News

If you’re a regular Naked Security reader, you’ll know we have a pet saying that goes like this:

If in doubt
Don’t give it out

That’s a great rule to apply for your personal data, all the way from your email address to your street number.

So when a store asks for a postcode after selling you something, just smile and say, “No.”

Same thing for your phone number, your street address, your date of birth, your employer’s name, and so on.

You may need or want to give out the data, of course – so that you can have a sofa delivered, for example, or to keep in contact someone you’ve just met in person.

That’s your choice, but think twice before you do it, and don’t let yourself get squeezed into letting personal data slip out against your will.

Assuming there is no legal neccessity to provide precise data, here are two useful tricks if you’re in the UK. The postcode ZZ99 3WZ won’t be accepted by all software out there, but it’s the official code used by the health service to denote “address not known”. And the phone number +44.1632.960789 is amongst thousands of landline numbers officially reserved by the regulator for use in situations such as TV programmes, where using someone’s real number would be inappropriate. (Try +44.7700.900.456 if you need a won’t-accidentally-ring-someone-else’s-phone mobile number.)