data - Vox

How To Manage Your Digital Footprint

Posted on 1 October 202521 October 2025 by Vivienne Fouche

Protect your personal data – how much key information are you really exposing?

Wherever there are people, there are those who decide to prey on them – this is true for the digital world just as much as the physical. And so, before you take the fun-looking quiz that popped up in your social media feed, think twice – and learn how to manage your digital footprint!

Do you really need to know what your ‘spooky Halloween’, ‘Harry Potter alter ego’ or ‘professional wrestler’ names are, based on a combination of – let’s say – your birth month, the first letter of your name, your street address details and the name of your pets / children?

It’s clear how easy it is to start building up personal information about you based on some of those details.

Most of us have had these seemingly innocent quizzes popping up on our social media feeds at some point. But the software program that’s going to send back the amusing ‘answer’ based on the personal information you shared… might just be a hacker.

Individual pieces of data may seem harmless, but when collected, they can tell a detailed story about your habits, preferences and even personal details like your birthday or location, which allows cybercriminals to go deeper into your online profile for their own personal gain.

Let’s look at ‘digital footprints’ and how much personal information you are actually exposing to the underworld.

Footprints Across the World Wide Web

Manage your digital footprint — Learn how to manage your digital footprint!

A digital footprint means the trail of data you leave when using the Internet, and it can be used to track a person’s online activities and devices. Internet users create their digital footprint either actively or passively, through everyday activities that create it such as social media, browsing, shopping, apps and location services.

The types of data being exposed includes personally identifiable information (PII) such as a phone number or ID number, your financial data, browsing and shopping habits, location tracking, and metadata, including information about your device, your IP address and cookies. Your digital footprint can be used legitimately enough for targeted advertising, when companies use your data to categorise you and show you personalised ads; as well as for data analysis, when companies use technology to collect and analyse this data to build profiles about you – let’s say to offer you better service as a customer.

More sinisterly, though, a comprehensive footprint makes you an attractive target for hackers and scammers and puts you at risk of identity theft and scams. And everyone should be aware that your reputation and potential employment can also be affected, because your online activity can be seen by potential employers.

We look at how to reduce your online footprint.

Active Versus Passive

Active digital footprints take place when the Internet user has deliberately shared information about themselves. They include:

- Social media posts, comments and messages;

- Emails and newsletters you send and receive;

- Online purchases and shopping history; and

- Website content you upload or download.

Passive digital footprints are created when information is collected about the user without them being aware that this is happening. They include:

- Internet browsing and search history;
- Location data from your phone or devices;
- Data collected by cookies on websites; and
- Information from apps and wearable devices.

Online Privacy Tips to Protect Your Personal Data and Reduce Your Online Footprint

Here are some tips for protecting your personal data and help you to manage your digital footprint.

Double-check your privacy settings on social media to control who sees your posts.
Use search engines to check your digital footprint: You could contact the site administrator to see if information about you that you find can be removed. You could also set up Google alerts to keep an eye on your name.
Avoid oversharing on social media: Think twice before revealing your location or travel plans, or other personal information like your phone number or email address.
Avoid unsafe websites: Make sure you’re transacting with a secure website – the URL should start with https:// rather than http:// – the ‘s’ stands for ‘secure’ and indicates that the site has a security certificate. There should also be a padlock icon to the left of the address bar.
Don’t send personal information on public Wi-Fi: A public Wi-Fi network is less secure than your personal one.
Delete old accounts: This reduces your exposure to potential data breaches.
Create strong passwords and use a password manager: Using a password manager will help generate, store and manage all your passwords in one secure online account.
Don’t log in with Facebook: Every time you sign into a third-party website using your Facebook credentials, you give that company permission to mine your Facebook user data.
Keep software up to date: Cybercriminals can access a victim’s devices and data by exploiting vulnerabilities in software. You can help prevent this by keeping your software up to date.
Review your mobile use: Set a passcode for your mobile device, and when installing an app, read the user agreement. Is the app possibly going to mine personal data like your email, location and online activities?
Act fast after a breach: If a financial loss is involved, contact your bank or credit card provider. Change passwords that might have been exposed.
Use a VPN: Using a virtual private network, or VPN, can help safeguard your digital footprint. This is because VPNs mask your IP address which makes your online actions virtually untraceable.

Digital footprints matter because cybercriminals can exploit your digital footprint, for example using it for phishing for account access, or creating false identities based on your data. You can’t erase your digital footprint entirely, but you can control its visibility.

Why not use the steps outlined here to look at your online presence today and see how you can make your digital footprint more manageable, to better protect your online privacy and yourself?

Keeping your digital privacy in South Africa (and around the globe) safer and more secure will help to keep your banking and other details private and therefore safer, in turn bringing you increased peace of mind.

The message is clear: no more funny quizzes to find out your Harry Potter alter ego, because there’s nothing at all magical about being hacked.

Vox has teamed up with Norton to help individuals and also families to stay safe online – you can block hackers from accessing your devices, keep your online activity private and better protect your identity.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a digital footprint?
A digital footprint is the trail of information you leave online from actions like social posts, searches, purchases and app use. It includes active data you deliberately share and passive data collected about your device, location and browsing habits.

Why does my digital footprint matter?
Your digital footprint can be used for personalised services and ads, but it also makes you a target for scams, identity theft and reputation risks — for example, employers or fraudsters may view or use that information.

How can I check what’s in my digital footprint?
Start by Googling your name, checking social profiles, and using Google Alerts for your name. Review privacy settings on social sites and request removal from sites or directories that publish your personal details.

What simple steps help manage your digital footprint?
Limit what you share on social media, tighten privacy settings, delete old accounts, use strong unique passwords with a password manager, and avoid logging into third‑party sites with Facebook or Google where possible.

Are online quizzes and personality apps safe?
Many quizzes ask for pieces of personal data that, when combined, can be exploited. Treat them sceptically — don’t give out real birthdates, ID numbers, addresses or your mother’s maiden name for a bit of fun.

How can I protect personal data on my mobile device and apps?
Set a passcode or biometric lock, check app permissions before installing (location, contacts, microphone), update apps and the OS regularly, and avoid using public Wi‑Fi for sensitive transactions unless you use a trusted VPN.

What should I do if my personal data is exposed in a breach?
Act quickly: change passwords, notify your bank or card provider if financial details were involved, enable two‑factor authentication, and monitor accounts for unauthorised activity or identity fraud.

Will a VPN and password manager improve my digital privacy?
Yes. A reputable VPN masks your IP and helps protect activity on public networks, while a password manager generates and stores strong unique passwords — together they significantly reduce your exposure when managing your digital footprint.

Vox MTN LTE-A Promotion: Double the FUP, Double the Fun This Festive Season

Posted on 1 January 20259 January 2025 by Chris Boshoff

With Vox and MTN LTE Uncapped Packages

In the spirit of giving back, Vox and MTN are running a fantastic Vox MTN LTE-A promotion to give you double the FUP, and more than double the fun.

“Double the what?” – yes, it’s a fair question.

In short, our promo gives you double the allocated data bundle, free of charge, till the end of January 2025.

Let’s see what you and your family can do with double the FUP when you sign up for a Vox MTN LTE Uncapped package.

But first – what does FUP actually mean?

To ensure fair use on the MTN network (and ISP networks in general), your maximum download and upload speeds will be adjusted if you consume more data in the specific month than the Fair Usage Policy, or FUP limit, of your selected plan.

This is called ‘speed throttling’ and it plays an important part of the FUP rules for your selected plan. If your Internet usage speed is throttled, you will still have use of the service at the adjusted rate until the next month, when your normal maximum speed is restored.

Let’s unpack it.

Sharing is Caring

This is how speed throttling works.

Imagine a multi-lane highway of holidaymakers all heading down to the coast. Everyone is keeping nicely to the rules of the road and sharing the infrastructure, except for a small group of road hogs swerving in and out of the lanes and taking up most of the road, trying to get there faster and inconveniencing everyone else in the process. Just because, you know, they’re ‘special’.

Because of their assumption that they own the road, everyone else is forced to repeatedly hit the brakes. And then, tada! – the Highway Police arrive and put a stop to their high jinks. While the road hogs are pulled over and put in their place, everyone else is able to continue travelling again at a decent speed, as per how the highway was designed to be used by all.

Well, FUP is all about making sure the Internet ‘highway’ is used fairly by everyone in a way that the designated infrastructure allows – and speed throttling plays an important part in doing this.

What’s FUP, Guys?

As outlined above, Fair Usage Policy (FUP) is a set of guidelines imposed by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to ensure fair and equal access to the Internet for all users. It’s designed to prevent network abuse and congestion by placing limits on the data usage of individual subscribers, especially at peak usage times.

If you use more than a certain, predetermined ‘fair’ amount of data in a given timeframe, your line speed could be slowed down during peak times to give other users fair access to the network.

In essence, FUP is designed to prevent a few users from hogging the available bandwidth, thereby causing shared services to become unavailable for others. And so, if you’ve ever found that your broadband speed has suddenly slowed down significantly, you might have just been FUPPED. You were one of the roadhogs!

Or, to put it in terms that might appear in your contract: “When you reach your FUP, your speed will be throttled up to 1Mbps.”

In simple terms, being throttled means that your upload and download speeds will be significantly reduced. You just got pulled over – except that the ISPs are nicer than the Highway Police and they let you off with a warning.

That’s because with FUP, your ISP doesn’t send you to jail and stop your Internet usage completely, but instead allows you to continue accessing the Internet and ‘keep on driving’ – just significantly slower for a while. By restricting individuals’ bandwidth, more people can use the Internet service at the same time.

The Convenience and Quality of LTE-A Connectivity

With high-speed, top-quality Internet access, Fixed LTE-A offers connectivity that provides near-Fibre like experiences, together with hassle free installation: a plug and play service means no waiting for fixed line installation.

In addition, where Fibre networks might take weeks or months to roll out and to install, Fixed LTE-A is a rapid order-to-installation product – whenever there is high-density Fixed LTE-A coverage, the time to deliver quality Internet access is between seven to 10 days – another win as we approach the festive season!

Enough Bandwidth for the Good Times

Many people are still on vacation quite late into January, after which they go back to school, varsity / college, and work. And so now we see the real advantage of signing up for the promo – increased data consumption! (And as mentioned previously – free of charge!)

Different apps have different data appetites – streaming on Netflix or Showmax in HD will consume more data than just reading an article online, and downloading a game eats up more data than actually playing it.

Here are some everyday activities that you and your family are likely to be doing more of at this time of the year, together with their possible hourly data consumption rates:

Web browsing: Approximately 50 to 70MB per hour.
Streaming video: High-definition (HD) video can consume up to 8GB per hour.
Online gaming: Up to 100MB per hour.
Social media: Platforms like Instagram and Facebook can use around 200MB per hour.

Vox and MTN Fixed LTE-A Promo Offerings

The current promotion applies to two of our Vox Fixed MTN LTE-A offerings, as follows:

Normal Offering:

R849 per month: Uncapped with normal FUP of 1,000GB (ie line speed is throttled back for the rest of the month when you / your household have used 1,000GB of data).
R499 per month: Uncapped 50MBps with normal FUP of 500GB (line speed is throttled for the rest of the month when 500GB of data usage is reached).

Promotional Offering:

During the promotion period, the Uncapped 1,000GB FUP offering will be extended to 2,000GB, and the uncapped 50Mbps FUP offering will be doubled to 1,000GB (1TB of data usage).

RICA documents will be required when ordering Vox Fixed MTN LTE-A and these are:

A certified copy of your ID; and
Proof of your residential address that is not older than three months.

A Great Start to the Year

With the Vox / MTN Uncapped LTE promotion, we’re offering you – free of charge – double the bandwidth before FUP is applied, on the specified packages.

No more slow internet
Stream without buffering
Connect to multiple smart devices
VoIP calling and lightning-fast connection
Efficient for going back to work and studies

From video calls to streaming entertainment, gaming and online shopping, Vox and MTN’s Fixed LTE Uncapped Double the FUP deal has you covered to ensure that your Internet connection is up to the task and ready to manage the digital demands of you and your family.

You can click here to find out more .

Don’t Sleep on Data Backup and Recovery

Posted on 18 October 2024 by Vivienne Fouche

Even Presidents Can Be Hacked

Data is the life blood of all organisations, and any loss of data can have serious implications for a business. The sudden loss of sensitive financial records or confidential information would be devastating to a company, with potential consequences including operational disruption, financial loss and reputational damage, as well as emotional distress to its customers.

Data loss can occur in many different ways. A hardware failure, a power outage, a natural disaster, or a cyber attack could all result in the loss of critical business data. Without a data backup plan, your organisation could be at risk of losing everything.

This means it’s essential to have proactive cybersecurity in place, as well as steps to control data backup and recovery, to protect an organisation’s digital assets. Having a reliable and redundant backup solution can assist companies to recover from incidents such as ransomware or hardware failure.

Three, Two, One: Go! For Data Backup

Data backup is a proactive measure that involves creating duplicate copies of critical data to guard against potential loss. These copies act as insurance against unforeseen events like hardware failures, accidental deletions and even cyberattacks.

Establishing a reliable backup strategy is like giving yourself a digital safety net to protect against risks – or an insurance policy, to put it another way.

Effectively implementing data backup and cybersecurity requires a strategic approach. Establishing a solid data backup plan involves adhering to the 3-2-1 backup rule, which has been used for many years and is supported by solution providers, businesses and even governments.

The 3-2-1 backup rule outlines that three backups must be kept, two of which should be on two different media (usually disk and tape), while one copy must be outside the primary data centre. This approach ensures protection against various scenarios, from hardware failures to natural disasters.

SA President Not Immune from Ransomware Attacks

South African government institutions have been battered by ransomware gangs over the last year.

The Development Bank of Southern Africa was targeted by a ransomware attack in June 2024, with servers, logfiles and documents stolen. In September this year, South Africa’s defence department was hacked by a gang that also allegedly leaked the personal phone number and email of President Cyril Ramaphosa, as well as a portion of the 1.6 terabytes of data stolen from the country’s defence systems.

The country’s International Trade Administration Commission also said it was hit with ransomware in early 2024. More recently, in June, the National Health Laboratory Service (NHLS) was targeted by a ransomware attack in which hackers deleted sections of their system, including backup servers, which meant that they were required to rebuild many of the affected parts. The attack took place at a time when Mpox outbreaks in the country were of concern.

These statistics show that data loss is a severe problem that can have a significant impact on an organisation, causing financial and reputational damage.

Protect Your Data with Vox

At Vox, we understand the critical importance of keeping your data safe with a backup and recovery plan. As a Veeam Gold Partner, we offer your business the opportunity to create a copy of your data through our Backup as a Service, which uses the 3-2-1 rule.

As a trusted leader in the data protection space, Veeam provides backup, recovery and replication for critical workloads, like VMware, AWS, Microsoft Azure, SQL Server, Oracle, Windows, Linux and NAS, across physical, virtual and cloud platforms, in a single offering.

With the Vox 3-2-1 Backup solution, we provide an onsite data store for fast local restores, and replicates the data to our Cloud repository in case of major onsite disaster. It supports onsite virtual or physical servers as well as Windows and Linux desktops.

We offer a number of benefits:

A fully managed solution with proactive monitoring to ensure data isn’t lost
Ongoing integrity testing ensures that data is not corrupt and that backups can be recovered
The option to quickly restore to Vox Cloud so that users can continue to work.

Companies implementing a backup strategy often only keep data on-site, believing this to be infallible. However, a ransomware attack or critical hardware failure, in most instances, renders the data unrecoverable. With our Vox solution, you can protect against this risk by adding an additional layer of redundancy, as follows:

3 copies of your data: This is the primary copy of the data you are using as well as two backups.
Saved on 2 different mediums: In addition to your primary copy, an onsite NAS device stores your backups, enabling quick restore functionality to reduce downtime.
1 copy offsite in the Vox Cloud: Using Veeam’s Cloud connect, a backup copy is stored and maintained in the Vox Cloud.

The urgency to backup data lies in the potential devastation that is caused by data loss. You don’t want your organisation to become another statistic – or another bad news story in the headlines.

But first – what does FUP actually mean?

Available in your area