Protected Information: A Right, Not a Privilege

Protected Information

You may ask yourself, “In this day and age, why is protecting my personal information so important when there is already so much of it floating around?” You bank online, you pay for things online or over the phone daily and you maintain multiple online social media profiles — protecting yourself seems nearly impossible at this point.
 
This simply is not (and should not be) the case. You can protect your personal information, and you should feel entitled and empowered to do so. No one deserves to have their personal security compromised by malicious intent or through something that might seem to be an accident.
 
One of the most traumatic and common ways in which our personal and online security is violated is through identity theft. According to the 2017 Identity Fraud Study, $16 billion was stolen from 15.4 million individuals in the US in 2016. Identity theft is an issue that occurs on a global scale and can happen to anyone of any age or income bracket regardless of how diligent you might be about changing your passwords and giving out credit card information. As we know, identity theft can ruin lives as criminals quickly and easily spend money or commit crimes under our names—often times without us even knowing for days or even weeks.
 

Protect Yourself and Your Information

Unfortunately, identity thieves are getting smarter and stronger with the ability to access information through hacking and other online means. This presents greater issues to businesses and individuals who have a need to share or collect information through online platforms.
 
One of the biggest threats to your personal security is the device you keep in your pocket: your smartphone. Having constant and instant access to your network presents a plethora of new opportunities for identity theft to take place. Luckily, the FTC offers some insightful tips on ways you can protect yourself and identity when using mobile devices, including smartphones and laptops:
 
Be creative when coming up with your passwords. The FTC suggests, “thinking of a special phrase and using the first letter of each word as your password.” As an example, “To be or not to be? That is the question.” could become 2Bn2bTi?.
 
In the age of e-commerce, you need to know who you are dealing with when exchanging money over the phone or the Internet. Do your research to learn whether or not a site is reputable or whether or not a person is who they say they are.
 
Wipe your personal information off of a device before disposing of it. The hard drive should be completely clean before you pass a device along to someone else or turn it into an electronics recycling receptacle.
Finally, avoid oversharing on social media. It is easy for hackers and identity thieves to glean a lot of personal information about you from social media pages. Oftentimes, we list our date of birth, full name, pets’ names and more on these sites, which is an invitation for hackers to try to figure out what our passwords might be.
 
Being able to protect yourself and your family members online is your right, but we understand that it can also be a daunting task. You will save yourself the money, time and frustration by enacting the behaviors and making the decisions necessary to protect yourself and your personal information.
 
This responsibility carries over to your customers who are vulnerable when they are providing your organization with their sensitive information over the phone. Like you, they may feel hesitant to provide their credit card information or Social Security number to your Customer Service or Call Center Agent who needs this information in order to file a report. Again, it is their right to be able to protect themselves and their family members.
 

About SecureCall & ExactCall Solutions

If the nature of your industry requires your Customer Service or Call Center Agents to collect sensitive information from customers, consider a demo of KomBea’s SecureCall solution. SecureCall allows customers to provide their information using their phone’s keypad, without your agents seeing, hearing or accessing it. Your organization can still collect all of the information needed without running the risk of your customers’ data being compromised or hacked.
 
Additionally, if your industry requires strict compliance or the disclosure of complicated legal information, ExactCall can help to curb the human errors that lead to legal liabilities, fines and customer dissatisfaction.
Since ExactCall uses pre-recorded audio files to deliver information, you can ensure that your agents are following all of the necessary industry protocols.
 
Knowing that customers’ valuable and sensitive information is being handled in a safe and compliant manner will build trust with your organization, ultimately creating repeat customers and increasing sales.
 
Feel free to request information or schedule a SecureCall or ExactCall demo.
 
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