Privacy is everyone’s business, and VA leads the charge in protecting data for Veterans, their beneficiaries, and VA employees. Jan. 28 marks National Data Privacy Day, an international effort to empower individuals and encourage businesses to respect privacy, safeguard data and enable trust. To honor the day, VA Privacy Service shows how Veterans can protect their privacy at home, work, and in the community.

Additionally, these data privacy tips and best practices can help Veterans be privacy-savvy when checking email, surfing the web, and more:

  1. Set strong passwords using a combination of 8 or more characters, numbers and symbols, and do not share it with others. Example: 0range!2509
  2. Be aware of phishing scams. Phishing is the use of fraudulent yet sophisticated websites, emails, pop-ups, and links to trick unwitting victims into providing personal information like usernames, passwords, and even bank account numbers. Never provide any personal information until you have ensured the legitimacy of the requester.
  3. Avoid using public WiFi so that hackers can’t steal your login credentials.

Want to learn more, and discover other VA resources to protect your valuable personal data?

Crystal Drakeford, Government Information Specialist

Topics in this story

Data

Leave a comment

The comments section is for opinions and feedback on this particular article; this is not a customer support channel. If you are looking for assistance, please visit Ask VA or call 1-800-698-2411. Please, never put personally identifiable information (SSAN, address, phone number, etc.) or protected health information into the form — it will be deleted for your protection.

2 Comments

  1. stephen s January 30, 2020 at 18:35

    if you were really concerned about veteran’s privacy you would never have made the new information exchange program an OPT OUT situation. unless i had read a short little statement in one of the news letters i would never have known that you were planning to share all my medical information with every government or pseudo government entity in existence.

    • S W January 31, 2020 at 14:46

      I agree with Stephen S. Also, if you are so concern with our privacy why do you FORCE us to check in for appointments and do our travel on KIOSKS that FACE a waiting room? They ARE NOT privacy protected as you would have veterans believe and anybody standing behind us can steal all of our information and assume our identity.

Comments are closed.

More Stories