The term ‘egosurfing’ comes from the Latin ‘ego’ meaning ‘I’, from the English ‘surfing’, which translates as ‘surfing the Internet’. We have all, or almost all of us, at some time or another searched for our data on the Internet, and it is a good practice to know the security of our data on the Internet. In this article we are going to see how to perform egosurfing in our company in a safe way.
There are three ways to practice egosurfing in our company:
Internet search
It doesn't matter which browser or search engine we use. Typing the name of our company directly between quotation makes the search more direct and concrete and only searches for the parameters between quotation marks. We don't just have to look at the first few pages of results. We have to investigate and inspect the pages of videos, images, news... in this way we will be maximizing the flow of information available on the network. It is also very, very important not to stay only with the name of the company. It is necessary to look for other information that identifies us, such as postal address, corporate email address, VAT number...
Google Alerts
This magnificent tool allows us to preconfigure notifications if someone searches the Internet for the parameters we have selected. In this way, we can select the data of our company that we mentioned before and select to which email and with what frequency the alerts will arrive to us. This is a great way to check our privacy and security on the network.
Social Media
This strategy is similar to browser search. It is very important to look for the name of our company in all the social networks that we have, because the possibility of fake profiles that publish content in our name is very high.
One thing that should not be ignored when searching for us on social networks is the name of the account and of our company. If for example our company is called ‘ZepoApp’, we should try different combinations of names in the search engine of the social network, such as: ‘zepoaplicación’, ‘appzepo’, ‘zepoapk’, etc… It seems silly, but these differences can make cybercriminals impersonate us, asking our customers for sensitive data in our name or phishing them (making them believe that for example they have won a prize draw), discrediting the name of our company.
What if I don’t want what I have found in my company to be published?
First of all, if the information we have found was published by ourselves, we only need to delete it from the social network or platform where it is located.
Second, if that information is not published by us, we have several options:
- For example, if it is a malicious comment or we have been tagged in a post without our permission, we can configure our profiles to block certain comments and allow who tags us or not.
- If the information we have found violates the honor, reputation and/or privacy of our company, we must directly request the responsible or administrator of the profile or web page to remove the content. If we understand that the dissemination of such data goes against the honor of our company and could constitute a crime, we could file a formal complaint.
In summary, if we see a fake profile impersonating our company or one of our employees, we must report it directly to the relevant social network through all the channels made available for this purpose.
With Zepo. you can develop a sustainable cybersecurity culture within your organization in 3 simple steps:
Register your employees.
You can do it manually or through a CSV file.
Launch attacks and test your teams.
You will be able to check in real time who falls into the trap
Train them in cyber-attack prevention.
Creates customized prevention courses
