Be stingy with your personal information; you won’t regret it

In Kenya, there is pervasive but seemingly innocuous behaviour that makes many fraudsters grin. Many gated communities or office block entrances have security guards who require a visitor’s personal information before they are allowed in, ostensibly to record it and use it during investigations if a crime is committed.

They ask for your name, phone number, national identification (ID) number, and car registration number. They also take the name of the person or office you are going to visit. Apart from the vehicle’s registration number, the guards do not verify the rest of the information. They take it for granted.

Not that the guards don’t mean well; they do their work under the instruction of their employers. Unfortunately, they are not trained to keep the information they collect private: the yellowing notebook on which they record information is always open at the gate and passed from one guard to the other.

When the notebook is full, it’s anyone’s guess what happens to hundreds of records of personal information in it. This information helps prevent no crime — there is no evidence that places where guards collect personal information report lower crime rates than places where they don’t collect it.

This information perhaps aids crime. If the information gets into the wrong hands, crooks can use it to create new IDs and other documents and use them to impersonate. It’s what we call in tech lingo “identity theft”.

Personal information is precious

But if this information is for curbing crime, the personal details: name, ID, and phone number should ideally be verified. Guards should ask visitors to show their ID instead of merely asking them to say the number. They should perhaps be requested to confirm their phone number by calling a monitored phone line, or the guard can call the number to authenticate that it belongs to the visitor.

Personal information is precious. It represents you. It’s the type of information that a bank would require from you when opening an account. It’s the information that a mobile service provider would require to register a phone line. It is the information most organisations need to provide you with personalised services.

Don’t give out your information so guilelessly. Ask questions, and if the questions are not answered to your satisfaction, don’t give it out.

For homes and offices looking for better security at their gates, surveillance cameras work better. As the security guards flag cars to stop, surveillance cameras mounted at the gate record and keep a copy of the information for reference if need be.

Your information is your identity: don’t be so gullible to give it out and then lament when you are defrauded, or your bank account is emptied. Be stingy with your personal information. It’s precious.