Your Personal Information on the Web
Thursday, November 26, 2009 at 09:17AM By Brad M Smith
Each time you use the Internet to shop, transact with your bank or do any activity that needs you to send personal information, you are actually inviting intrusion of those whom you may not be happy to have around. In other words, you're making yourself a target for hackers who will always somehow find a way to make use of that personal information to serve themselves. Even when you've made your transactions a long time ago, it doesn't mean that details you've shared about your credit card or bank account are necessarily gone. There will be traces and this is the part that most have been taking for granted.
Sure, there is encryption but it's not even a guaranteed way to totally eradicate the risk of your information being hijacked. This means that there's only two ways to address the problem: do not share your personal information online and, should sharing be inevitable, do something to remove all traces of that information. Remember that encryption only works when your computer is actually free from vulnerabilities or weaknesses. If it's not, then you're very much at risk. Just to make sure that nobody out there is going to use what your only rightfully yours, have your computer fixed and safe from those vulnerabilities which could be easily exploited to make you a very easy target of identity theft and who knows what other cyber crimes these online hooks can perpetrate.
If it's impossible for you not to make online transactions involving your personal details, then you have to protect yourself manually by making sure that you delete traces of these details using your browser's options. The problem again is that it would be such a tedious task to have to clean up thee traces because, after all, there not one single virtual location that they can be controlled. There isn't even a single option that allows you to do the said task automatically.
You can make use of the SSL or Secure Socket Layer technology which also works by encryption except that, again, your computer could be exploited for its vulnerabilities and this type of protection may not work. Perhaps for the time that you have made your transactions, then you can deal with the dangers but the one thing you can do to protect yourself significantly is by preventing a scenario whereby you will be exposed to these online threats.
Prevention can be ensuring that your computer is free from vulnerabilities so as not to invite hackers. You can also install IP hiding software on your system so each time you have to shop or bank through the Internet, you can reduce the damage that identity theft can do. When your IP address is hidden, that means they won't have a way of reaching you and as long as you stay hidden, you'll be free from their clout.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Brad_M_Smith
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Reader Comments (1)
Cool,
I have to say that this is a really good post to try to raise awareness of fraud and such,
Keep up the good work