When you log on to a chat room or web forum, do you feel more anonymous than you might if you were having a discussion in real life? Do you send emails you don't want certain people to read?
Many people believe the internet is a great way to communicate without giving up their personal details. Unfortunately, conversations on the web can be as easily “overheard” as a conversation with a friend at a footpath café.
Digital surveillance
Whether you realise it or not, almost every point and click you make is tracked in some way or another. For the most part, this isn’t a bad thing—it lets web sites you visit frequently remember your password, and online stores can keep track of what types of products you like.
Regrettably, when the wrong person is at the helm, this type of information can be exploited. Particularly if a website is using older technology, this could leave you open to someone learning your street address, credit cards and even more.
One type of scam, known as “phishing", doesn’t require much use of fancy technology. Instead, it relies on human trust, which is often considered the “weak link” in security. In a phishing scam, a user typically receives an official-looking email, perhaps seeming to come from eBay or a popular bank that asks for verification of sensitive details. In reality, the email will link to a scammer’s own web page, whereupon the user will voluntarily enter sensitive information without realising it is being surrendered for malicious causes.
According to the Anti-Phishing Working Group, the number of phishing incidents reported doubled in less than a year from 6,957 in October 2004 to 15,050 in June 2005.
What to do?
Luckily, you’re not helpless against online manipulation. There are several preventative measures you can take, and they’re almost always free. A good first step is to make sure your browser itself is secure. Add-ons exist for the popular Internet Explorer to make it more secure, and other, more natively secure browsers exist.
Anti-spyware tools are also available to ensure that your computer is free of harmful software that you didn’t mean to install. If you do have malicious software on your computer, these tools, along with virus scanners, will try to eradicate it.
Finally, the best tool to keep your browsing private is to just use common sense. Almost no reputable company will contact you through email, so make sure (by checking in your address bar) that you’re actually at ebay.com, and not ebay.jerrysplace.com.
In general, just protect your browser and stay away from any dodgy places on the net and you’ll be good to go!
How do I know this?
Wikipedia Free Encyclopaedia, Social Engineering, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_engineering_%2...
Wikipedia Free Encyclopaedia, Internet privacy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_privacy
