The Urethane Blog
Everchem Updates
VOLUME XXI
September 14, 2023
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September 28, 2021
KPX Chemical and Huntsman form Joint Venture in Korea
Download as PDF September 28, 2021 2:00am EDT
Strategic alliance will provide Korean automakers with advanced polyurethane systems solutions
THE WOODLANDS, Texas, Sept. 28, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — KPX Chemical, a leading polyols producer for polyurethanes in Korea, and Huntsman Corporation (NYSE: HUN), a world-leading MDI-based polyurethanes and specialty chemical manufacturer, today announced the establishment of a joint venture named KPX HUNTSMAN POLYURETHANES AUTOMOTIVE CO., LTD. (KHPUA). The joint venture will create and provide innovative polyurethane system solutions to Korean automakers from a specialty polyurethanes manufacturing facility at KPX Chemical’s Ulsan plant. Operations are expected to commence by the end of October.
The Korean automotive industry is undergoing profound changes and presents new opportunities for high performance and light weight polyurethane system solutions. The new joint venture will accelerate growth in this sector by providing sustainable innovations and a high level of technical service support to its customers. KPX Chemical will leverage its 47-years’ experience in polyol technology and know-how by combining it with Huntsman’s proven ability to develop high performance, differentiated, MDI-based automotive solutions for vehicle manufacturers and its fully integrated global supply chain.
Tony Hankins, President of Huntsman’s Polyurethanes division and CEO of Huntsman Asia Pacific, said: “We are delighted to join forces with KPX Chemical. Korea is one of Huntsman’s key markets in Asia and driving continued business growth in the automotive industry is a priority for us. The new joint venture will create and provide customized polyurethane systems solutions to meet local automotive customers’ needs for improved comfort, superior acoustics and light-weighting. By creating value for its customers, KHPUA will enable downstream polyurethanes businesses to develop in a more sustainable way, both economically and environmentally.”
Kim Moon-young, President of KPX Chemical, said: “This cooperation is of great strategic significance to both parties. Together, under the banner of KHPUA, we will leverage the R&D and capacity advantages of KPX Chemical and Huntsman in the region to become the industry’s preferred innovation partner. It is an exciting time to be creating a new venture and we look forward to working with key players in the region to meet growing demand for autonomous vehicles and electric transport solutions that can support the country’s carbon neutrality ambitions.”
September 28, 2021
KPX Chemical and Huntsman form Joint Venture in Korea
Download as PDF September 28, 2021 2:00am EDT
Strategic alliance will provide Korean automakers with advanced polyurethane systems solutions
THE WOODLANDS, Texas, Sept. 28, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — KPX Chemical, a leading polyols producer for polyurethanes in Korea, and Huntsman Corporation (NYSE: HUN), a world-leading MDI-based polyurethanes and specialty chemical manufacturer, today announced the establishment of a joint venture named KPX HUNTSMAN POLYURETHANES AUTOMOTIVE CO., LTD. (KHPUA). The joint venture will create and provide innovative polyurethane system solutions to Korean automakers from a specialty polyurethanes manufacturing facility at KPX Chemical’s Ulsan plant. Operations are expected to commence by the end of October.
The Korean automotive industry is undergoing profound changes and presents new opportunities for high performance and light weight polyurethane system solutions. The new joint venture will accelerate growth in this sector by providing sustainable innovations and a high level of technical service support to its customers. KPX Chemical will leverage its 47-years’ experience in polyol technology and know-how by combining it with Huntsman’s proven ability to develop high performance, differentiated, MDI-based automotive solutions for vehicle manufacturers and its fully integrated global supply chain.
Tony Hankins, President of Huntsman’s Polyurethanes division and CEO of Huntsman Asia Pacific, said: “We are delighted to join forces with KPX Chemical. Korea is one of Huntsman’s key markets in Asia and driving continued business growth in the automotive industry is a priority for us. The new joint venture will create and provide customized polyurethane systems solutions to meet local automotive customers’ needs for improved comfort, superior acoustics and light-weighting. By creating value for its customers, KHPUA will enable downstream polyurethanes businesses to develop in a more sustainable way, both economically and environmentally.”
Kim Moon-young, President of KPX Chemical, said: “This cooperation is of great strategic significance to both parties. Together, under the banner of KHPUA, we will leverage the R&D and capacity advantages of KPX Chemical and Huntsman in the region to become the industry’s preferred innovation partner. It is an exciting time to be creating a new venture and we look forward to working with key players in the region to meet growing demand for autonomous vehicles and electric transport solutions that can support the country’s carbon neutrality ambitions.”
September 28, 2021
Goldman Cuts China’s Q3 GDP Growth To 0% As A Result Of Growing Energy Crisis
by Tyler DurdenMonday, Sep 27, 2021 – 07:04 PM
It’s not just Europe that is suffering the mother of all commodity and energy price shocks: slowly but surely a similar fate is befalling China, where a perfect storm of increased regulation, extremely tight global energy supply, the escalating trade spat with Australia, surging coal prices and a crackdown on carbon has led to energy shortages first at factories and manufacturers and more recently, mass blackouts hitting tens of millions of residents in at least three Chinese provinces (as we discussed earlier).
In our commentary to China’s growing energy problem we said that “while the blackouts starting to hit household power usage are at most an inconvenience, if one which may soon result in even more civil unrest if these are not contained, a bigger worry is that the already snarled supply chains could get even more broken, leading to even greater supply-disruption driven inflation.”
But there’s more than just supply chains: as Goldman’s China strategist Hui Shan writes in a note published late on Monday, “the recent sharp cuts to production in a range of high-energy-intensity industries add to the already significant downside pressures in the growth outlook.”
While the Goldman strategist explains more in detail further, the production cuts are due primarily to increased regulatory pressure on provinces to meet energy use targets for 2021 but also reflect surging energy prices in some cases. He notes that the NDRC issued ratings in mid-August showing nine provinces as performing poorly based on H1 energy usage, and reportedly intensified its efforts to bring underperformers into line in mid-September.
Based on the number of provinces (9 in NDRC ‘red’ classification) and share of industrial activity affected (Goldman estimates 44%), as well as informed assumptions about the extent of the cutbacks, the bank has estimated the hit to industrial production and overall economic activity for the remainder of the year. The bank’s initial estimate is roughly a 1 percentage-point annualized hit to Q3 GDP growth and double this impact on Q4 growth. The bank then also adjusted its fiscal deficit estimates to reflect a smaller augmented deficit
for 2021 (11.0%, vs 11.6% previously), accounted for by a lower deficit in the second half of the year: “This trims our growth assumption by about 25bp in Q3 and 50bp in Q4, given a relatively low multiplier and typical lags.”
Putting it all together, Goldman’s new growth forecasts for Q3 shrink to flat, or 0% qoq (4.8% yoy), for Q4 to 6% qoq ann (3.2% yoy), and for 2021 as a whole to 7.8% (down from 5.1%, 4.1%, and 8.2% yoy previously.) Here, Goldman caveats that “considerable uncertainty” remains with respect to the fourth quarter, with both upside and downside risks relating principally to the government’s approach to managing the Evergrande stresses, the strictness of environmental target enforcement and the degree of policy easing. In short, how Beijing responds will impact the forecast. Regardless of said response, however, Goldman also takes down its 2022 GDP growth forecast to 5.5% yoy, well below China’s new redline in the 6% range.
* * *
Elaborating further, Goldman writes that in recent weeks markets have been focused on developments with respect to Evergrande, its real estate development business, and risks to the broader Chinese property sector. The downward pressures on property sales and construction have added to a myriad of other headwinds for the economy including a relatively tight macro policy stance (epitomized by a balanced official fiscal budget in H1), Covid-related restrictions to counter local outbreaks, and regulatory tightening across a range of other sectors.
To this, we can now add a “new but tightening” constraint on growth from increased regulatory pressure to meet environmental targets for energy consumption and energy intensity (the so-called “dual controls”). As part of the country’s longer-term goal to reach peak carbon emissions by 2030, policymakers formulated shorter term targets for 2021 in March’s Government Work Report – including a 3% reduction in energy intensity of GDP this year. The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) monitors these at the provincial level on a quarterly basis. In August, it released a report classifying 9 provinces as category “red” – having missed their H1 targets, including Qinghai, Ningxia, Guangxi, Guangdong, Fujian, Xinjiang, Yunnan, Shaanxi and Jiangsu (Exhibit 1). Another 10 provinces were classified as “yellow”. In mid-September, the NDRC published a plan for “dual controls” and was reported to pressure provinces that had lagged behind to curb energy use.
Why did the energy use targets become binding so soon after being implemented?
While it presumably was not the intention of policymakers to provoke a sharp tightening, at least when the goals were initially formulated, the peculiar nature of the Covid shock has made the economy more energy-intensive, at least temporarily. The boom in exports has boosted energy-intensive manufacturing industries (Exhibit 2), while Covid-related restrictions have primarily affected interaction-intensive service businesses. Meanwhile, efforts to reduce coal-fired related emissions and a reduction in coal imports have affected supply levels at least on the margin, contributing to the sharp increase in prices discussed earlier.
What follows below is Goldman’s attempt to quantify the impact of these production cutbacks on growth in Q3 and Q4.
First, quantifying the impact of energy-related production cuts.
Given the uncertainty associated with the degree and duration of production cuts, Goldman has made a number of simplifying assumptions to size the impact on GDP. Exhibit 4 displays these assumptions and calculations.
First, the bank categorizes affected regions by their 1H 21 energy control ratings given by the NDRC. For the nine provinces where the rating is red, the local governments need to aggressively reduce energy consumption to meet the year-end target and we assume the largest production cuts in those provinces. This means even more pain is coming.
Second, Goldman divides industries by their energy intensity. For ferrous metals, non-ferrous metals and non-metal mineral products, the NDRC labels them as “high energy intensity” sectors and they are also cited most frequently in the news related to the latest power cuts (see here for example). Therefore, the bank assumes the sharpest production cuts (20-40%) in these three industries. Petroleum, coking & nuclear fuel and chemical material & product are also labeled as “high energy intensity” sectors, and are likely to suffer medium levels of production cuts (10-20%). Mining, textile, paper making, chemical fiber and rubber & plastic product require significant energy inputs and have been quoted in news articles as well. Goldman assumes 5-10% of production cuts depending on the province for these industries.
Altogether, Goldman expects the 10 days of production cuts at the end of September to reduce real GDP growth by nearly one percentage point (annualized) in Q3. The rightmost column in Exhibit 4 shows the hit to the level of GDP in Q3 for each set of industries; these sum to 23bp, and given this is a quarter-on-quarter change, the annualized change is slightly less than one percentage point (92bp).
Assuming the production cuts continue in Q4 and affect 10 days per month, they would reduce Q4 real GDP growth by about 1.8% sequentially. Here, Goldman hands out the usual caveats: namely that there is a great deal of uncertainty in our estimates. On the one hand, the bank assumes no places outside of the red and yellow provinces and no industries beyond the 10 industries mentioned above are affected, which will likely underestimate the actual production impact. On the other hand, affected companies may resort to shifting maintenance timing in response to power cuts and production may increase in provinces with non-binding energy caps, leading to less damage to overall growth.
Cutting fiscal deficit forecast
After Chinese authorities quickly unwound the macro policy easing deployed in the first half of 2020, credit growth decelerated, excess liquidity was drained, and the fiscal deficit declined. In fact, fiscal policy normalized so quickly that the country ran an official deficit of zero in the first half of the year. Goldman had expected some reduction in the overall fiscal deficit, but the tighter-than-expected H1 caused the bank to revise its deficit estimate for 2021 lower. While there has been some fiscal easing in July and August, this partly reflects typical seasonal patterns and the deficit is tracking below these downwardly-revised estimates. Significant off-budget elements of the augmented deficit including policy bank lending, trust lending, and land sales are tracking below the bank’s forecasts, and the latter in particular seems likely to continue to underperform given the ongoing property market tightening and failed land auctions seen in recent months. On the other hand, local government special bond issuance has accelerated somewhat but remains below the pace needed to fully utilize this year’s quota. Therefore, Goldman is revising a second time, and moving its forecast for the full-year augmented deficit to 11.0% from 11.6% previously.
Adjusting the new second-half deficit forecasts 1.2% lower and applying a multiplier of 0.2 (as well as a modest lag to some spending), Goldman now estimates an impact on qoq annualized growth of roughly -1/4pp in Q3 and -1/2pp in Q4.
The new GDP growth forecasts
Combining these new estimates for the impact of supply-side cuts to energy-intensive production and slightly less support from fiscal policy, Goldman cuts its growth forecasts for:
- Q3 to 0% (qoq annualized), from +1.3% previously,
- Q4 to 6.0% annualized, from 8.5% previously.
As a result, Goldman’s year-over-year forecasts are now just 4.8% for Q3, 3.2% for Q4, and 7.8% for 2021 as a whole.
Finally, the lower starting point for early 2022 activity pulls the growth forecast for that year down one tenth, to 5.5%, despite modestly stronger sequential growth as restrictions become less binding and policy eases.
Uncertainties and policy response
While the third quarter is nearly over, uncertainty around the Q4 pace remains very large, and a lot of this comes down to the stance of both macro and regulatory policy, i.e., Beijing’s reponse. Key drivers of the Q4 outcome will include the timing and extent of:
- government measures to stabilize housing sector activity and stretch out the deleveraging in the property sector,
- any temporary relaxation of regulatory pressures to meet energy use targets, and/or
- macro policy support.
Each of these factors could materialize on either the positive or negative side relative to these new reduced growth forecasts.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/goldman-cuts-chinas-q3-gdp-growth-0-amid-growing-energy-crisis
September 28, 2021
Goldman Cuts China’s Q3 GDP Growth To 0% As A Result Of Growing Energy Crisis
by Tyler DurdenMonday, Sep 27, 2021 – 07:04 PM
It’s not just Europe that is suffering the mother of all commodity and energy price shocks: slowly but surely a similar fate is befalling China, where a perfect storm of increased regulation, extremely tight global energy supply, the escalating trade spat with Australia, surging coal prices and a crackdown on carbon has led to energy shortages first at factories and manufacturers and more recently, mass blackouts hitting tens of millions of residents in at least three Chinese provinces (as we discussed earlier).
In our commentary to China’s growing energy problem we said that “while the blackouts starting to hit household power usage are at most an inconvenience, if one which may soon result in even more civil unrest if these are not contained, a bigger worry is that the already snarled supply chains could get even more broken, leading to even greater supply-disruption driven inflation.”
But there’s more than just supply chains: as Goldman’s China strategist Hui Shan writes in a note published late on Monday, “the recent sharp cuts to production in a range of high-energy-intensity industries add to the already significant downside pressures in the growth outlook.”
While the Goldman strategist explains more in detail further, the production cuts are due primarily to increased regulatory pressure on provinces to meet energy use targets for 2021 but also reflect surging energy prices in some cases. He notes that the NDRC issued ratings in mid-August showing nine provinces as performing poorly based on H1 energy usage, and reportedly intensified its efforts to bring underperformers into line in mid-September.
Based on the number of provinces (9 in NDRC ‘red’ classification) and share of industrial activity affected (Goldman estimates 44%), as well as informed assumptions about the extent of the cutbacks, the bank has estimated the hit to industrial production and overall economic activity for the remainder of the year. The bank’s initial estimate is roughly a 1 percentage-point annualized hit to Q3 GDP growth and double this impact on Q4 growth. The bank then also adjusted its fiscal deficit estimates to reflect a smaller augmented deficit
for 2021 (11.0%, vs 11.6% previously), accounted for by a lower deficit in the second half of the year: “This trims our growth assumption by about 25bp in Q3 and 50bp in Q4, given a relatively low multiplier and typical lags.”
Putting it all together, Goldman’s new growth forecasts for Q3 shrink to flat, or 0% qoq (4.8% yoy), for Q4 to 6% qoq ann (3.2% yoy), and for 2021 as a whole to 7.8% (down from 5.1%, 4.1%, and 8.2% yoy previously.) Here, Goldman caveats that “considerable uncertainty” remains with respect to the fourth quarter, with both upside and downside risks relating principally to the government’s approach to managing the Evergrande stresses, the strictness of environmental target enforcement and the degree of policy easing. In short, how Beijing responds will impact the forecast. Regardless of said response, however, Goldman also takes down its 2022 GDP growth forecast to 5.5% yoy, well below China’s new redline in the 6% range.
* * *
Elaborating further, Goldman writes that in recent weeks markets have been focused on developments with respect to Evergrande, its real estate development business, and risks to the broader Chinese property sector. The downward pressures on property sales and construction have added to a myriad of other headwinds for the economy including a relatively tight macro policy stance (epitomized by a balanced official fiscal budget in H1), Covid-related restrictions to counter local outbreaks, and regulatory tightening across a range of other sectors.
To this, we can now add a “new but tightening” constraint on growth from increased regulatory pressure to meet environmental targets for energy consumption and energy intensity (the so-called “dual controls”). As part of the country’s longer-term goal to reach peak carbon emissions by 2030, policymakers formulated shorter term targets for 2021 in March’s Government Work Report – including a 3% reduction in energy intensity of GDP this year. The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) monitors these at the provincial level on a quarterly basis. In August, it released a report classifying 9 provinces as category “red” – having missed their H1 targets, including Qinghai, Ningxia, Guangxi, Guangdong, Fujian, Xinjiang, Yunnan, Shaanxi and Jiangsu (Exhibit 1). Another 10 provinces were classified as “yellow”. In mid-September, the NDRC published a plan for “dual controls” and was reported to pressure provinces that had lagged behind to curb energy use.
Why did the energy use targets become binding so soon after being implemented?
While it presumably was not the intention of policymakers to provoke a sharp tightening, at least when the goals were initially formulated, the peculiar nature of the Covid shock has made the economy more energy-intensive, at least temporarily. The boom in exports has boosted energy-intensive manufacturing industries (Exhibit 2), while Covid-related restrictions have primarily affected interaction-intensive service businesses. Meanwhile, efforts to reduce coal-fired related emissions and a reduction in coal imports have affected supply levels at least on the margin, contributing to the sharp increase in prices discussed earlier.
What follows below is Goldman’s attempt to quantify the impact of these production cutbacks on growth in Q3 and Q4.
First, quantifying the impact of energy-related production cuts.
Given the uncertainty associated with the degree and duration of production cuts, Goldman has made a number of simplifying assumptions to size the impact on GDP. Exhibit 4 displays these assumptions and calculations.
First, the bank categorizes affected regions by their 1H 21 energy control ratings given by the NDRC. For the nine provinces where the rating is red, the local governments need to aggressively reduce energy consumption to meet the year-end target and we assume the largest production cuts in those provinces. This means even more pain is coming.
Second, Goldman divides industries by their energy intensity. For ferrous metals, non-ferrous metals and non-metal mineral products, the NDRC labels them as “high energy intensity” sectors and they are also cited most frequently in the news related to the latest power cuts (see here for example). Therefore, the bank assumes the sharpest production cuts (20-40%) in these three industries. Petroleum, coking & nuclear fuel and chemical material & product are also labeled as “high energy intensity” sectors, and are likely to suffer medium levels of production cuts (10-20%). Mining, textile, paper making, chemical fiber and rubber & plastic product require significant energy inputs and have been quoted in news articles as well. Goldman assumes 5-10% of production cuts depending on the province for these industries.
Altogether, Goldman expects the 10 days of production cuts at the end of September to reduce real GDP growth by nearly one percentage point (annualized) in Q3. The rightmost column in Exhibit 4 shows the hit to the level of GDP in Q3 for each set of industries; these sum to 23bp, and given this is a quarter-on-quarter change, the annualized change is slightly less than one percentage point (92bp).
Assuming the production cuts continue in Q4 and affect 10 days per month, they would reduce Q4 real GDP growth by about 1.8% sequentially. Here, Goldman hands out the usual caveats: namely that there is a great deal of uncertainty in our estimates. On the one hand, the bank assumes no places outside of the red and yellow provinces and no industries beyond the 10 industries mentioned above are affected, which will likely underestimate the actual production impact. On the other hand, affected companies may resort to shifting maintenance timing in response to power cuts and production may increase in provinces with non-binding energy caps, leading to less damage to overall growth.
Cutting fiscal deficit forecast
After Chinese authorities quickly unwound the macro policy easing deployed in the first half of 2020, credit growth decelerated, excess liquidity was drained, and the fiscal deficit declined. In fact, fiscal policy normalized so quickly that the country ran an official deficit of zero in the first half of the year. Goldman had expected some reduction in the overall fiscal deficit, but the tighter-than-expected H1 caused the bank to revise its deficit estimate for 2021 lower. While there has been some fiscal easing in July and August, this partly reflects typical seasonal patterns and the deficit is tracking below these downwardly-revised estimates. Significant off-budget elements of the augmented deficit including policy bank lending, trust lending, and land sales are tracking below the bank’s forecasts, and the latter in particular seems likely to continue to underperform given the ongoing property market tightening and failed land auctions seen in recent months. On the other hand, local government special bond issuance has accelerated somewhat but remains below the pace needed to fully utilize this year’s quota. Therefore, Goldman is revising a second time, and moving its forecast for the full-year augmented deficit to 11.0% from 11.6% previously.
Adjusting the new second-half deficit forecasts 1.2% lower and applying a multiplier of 0.2 (as well as a modest lag to some spending), Goldman now estimates an impact on qoq annualized growth of roughly -1/4pp in Q3 and -1/2pp in Q4.
The new GDP growth forecasts
Combining these new estimates for the impact of supply-side cuts to energy-intensive production and slightly less support from fiscal policy, Goldman cuts its growth forecasts for:
- Q3 to 0% (qoq annualized), from +1.3% previously,
- Q4 to 6.0% annualized, from 8.5% previously.
As a result, Goldman’s year-over-year forecasts are now just 4.8% for Q3, 3.2% for Q4, and 7.8% for 2021 as a whole.
Finally, the lower starting point for early 2022 activity pulls the growth forecast for that year down one tenth, to 5.5%, despite modestly stronger sequential growth as restrictions become less binding and policy eases.
Uncertainties and policy response
While the third quarter is nearly over, uncertainty around the Q4 pace remains very large, and a lot of this comes down to the stance of both macro and regulatory policy, i.e., Beijing’s reponse. Key drivers of the Q4 outcome will include the timing and extent of:
- government measures to stabilize housing sector activity and stretch out the deleveraging in the property sector,
- any temporary relaxation of regulatory pressures to meet energy use targets, and/or
- macro policy support.
Each of these factors could materialize on either the positive or negative side relative to these new reduced growth forecasts.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/goldman-cuts-chinas-q3-gdp-growth-0-amid-growing-energy-crisis
September 27, 2021
Strategies to Help Protect Your Digital Footprint
You can’t erase your digital footprint, but you can take steps to safeguard it.
You’ve likely heard of the term “digital footprint,” but you may not fully understand what that means or how to optimize your online presence for greater privacy and security. In our increasingly digital world, it’s important to be knowledgeable about these matters, so let’s review the basics.
What’s a Digital Footprint?
A digital footprint is an accumulation of all your activities online. Think about the routine things you do each day—crafting a social media post, making a purchase, activating an account, registering for a newsletter, checking the weather, completing a survey or sharing an article.
All these actions leave a digital trail, which can include your IP address as well as any personal details of your life that you’ve shared online. (An IP address is a unique series of numbers that’s assigned to each internet-connected device. It may reveal the city, area code or ZIP code from where you’re connecting, but not your name, mailing address or phone number.) This data can be tracked and analyzed by marketers, credit card issuers, advertisers, law enforcement agencies and other organizations to learn about your habits and create a customized profile.
In short, your digital footprint is similar to the footprints you leave when walking on a fresh blanket of snow. Others will be able to see where you’ve been. And while snow footprints will eventually fade away, digital footprints can be permanent.
Digital Footprints: The Good and Bad
Digital footprints can actually be beneficial. They can enhance the time you spend online by providing a more personalized, convenient experience—such as remembering your last food order or enabling you to receive targeted, exclusive offers that align with your interests.
You can even help create a “positive” footprint of yourself for others you might want to impress online—such as your boss, future employers or college admissions officers—by shaping your image through the messages, photos and other information you provide on social media or other online platforms.
But your digital footprint can also lead to a variety of negatives, such as unwanted solicitations, decreased privacy and identity theft. Cybercriminals can use your footprint to unleash more targeted, effective social engineering schemes, such as phishing attacks, and other scams against you.
Related articles
Safeguarding Your Digital Footprint
Fortunately, you can limit the potentially damaging impacts of your digital footprint by taking the following measures:
Search for yourself: Doing an online search about yourself may seem a bit vain. But it’s a good way to see the type of information that’s readily available about you. Try this with multiple search engines and explore the first several pages of results.
Be prepared to be surprised, though, by what you uncover. It can be alarming. If you find sensitive data you don’t want revealed—or if you come across information that’s incorrect, misleading or inappropriate—contact the site administrator to request removal of the material.
Set alerts: After performing your search, consider setting up alerts to more easily keep track of your online mentions in the future. With an alert, you’ll receive a notification whenever your name appears online.
To help eliminate results from other individuals with your same name, you can add keywords to your search that are associated with you (such as your hometown).
Use tighter privacy settings: Service providers for social media, e-commerce, email, search engines, web browsers, online conferencing and more often give their users the ability to manage the privacy settings for their accounts.
Using more restrictive settings can reduce your digital footprint and give you greater peace of mind. The National Cybersecurity Alliance provides direct links to manage privacy settings for many popular sites.
Just be aware, though, that increasing your security may interfere with some of the usability of the site or lead to other drawbacks. For example, deleting your search history can make it more inconvenient when doing future searches. Or blocking pop-up ads may prevent you from seeing ads or offers you’d normally welcome. Although the benefit of greater privacy is often worth these trade-offs, you should understand the implications of your actions before making any changes.
Also, when managing your privacy settings, take a couple of minutes to review the company’s privacy policy. It’s important to understand how an organization collects, stores, protects and utilizes your personal data. If you feel a policy is too intrusive, it’s best to just move along. Your privacy and security are too valuable.
Be cautious with social media: Even if you adopt stronger privacy settings, you still should be judicious about what you choose to reveal about yourself online. For example, use caution when responding to social media surveys as they can reveal personal information.
Or, you might want to proudly post a picture of your new grandchild on a social media account. But remember that anything you share online can be re-shared by friends, family members and colleagues without your consent.
And once that happens, it’s out of your control who will end up seeing your information.
Restrict mobile app permissions: Whenever you grant a mobile app access to your photos, location, camera, contacts and other information, it makes your data available to the app owner. So, be selective before giving an app permission to all the types of information it requests. Keep in mind that many apps will still work even if all permissions aren’t granted.
Limit your online accounts: Having a lot of online accounts leads to a bigger footprint. However, you can quickly reduce your footprint by deleting or deactivating accounts you no longer need. For example, is it necessary to have several email accounts? And what about that account you opened three years ago with an online retailer that you haven’t used since?
Be selective about opening new accounts, too. If you have the choice of checking out as a guest with a retailer instead of creating an account, it’s better to use that option unless you plan to be a frequent customer.
Use a password manager: A password manager is a software tool that securely creates, encrypts and stores unique, complex passwords for you. And since you should have a different password for each account, this saves you from the headache of remembering all those passwords.
Enable Multi-Factor Authentication (sometimes called Two-Factor Authentication) as well for any accounts where it’s offered.
Think before linking accounts: Some service providers allow you to register with their business by using an account you have with another company. For instance, maybe they’ll invite you to sign in through your Facebook or Google account.
Doing so grants these other organizations access to even more information about your online activities, which means you’ll need to decide if the convenience is worth the potential added exposure.
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