What is Online Security & Internet Safety? - How to Protect Your Online Privacy
What is online security and internet safety? These days, damaging threats like viruses, adware, spyware, scumware, hacker attacks and even identity theft and fraud are a common occurrence. A recent survey suggested that people are generally more concerned about their online security & Internet safety than they are about their cars being broken into. What does this tell us?
In general, people don't feel safe on the Internet. No matter how many programs and packages we download or buy there is bound to be a new threat just around the corner - one against which our newest protection program is probably going to be useless. So what do we do? We install our online security / internet safety protection programs, run weekly updates and keep our fingers crossed!
The truth is that there is probably no 100% effective online security & internet safety tools that can leave us immune to the constantly evolving threats that face our online peace of mind. However there are some steps we CAN take to make sure our computers (and our sanity) are as protected as possible. Here are ten ways you can brush up on your online safety - if you haven't taken these steps already - do so today or you risk becoming a statistic.
Ten Steps to Online security & internet Safety
1. Install anti-virus software and make sure to keep it updated. Buy the best software you can afford. These great little programs help to detect all known virus programs and will alert you if one has infected your computer. Remember however that new attacks surface daily so it is important that you always have the latest protection. Update once a week or more often where possible. The manufacturers of these programs try their best to stay in step with new online security & internet safety threats and will post details of new ones on their Web sites.
2. Monitor your e-mails for a breach in your online security & internet safety. Viruses infect your computer by means of attachments on your e-mail. Never open mail or attachments from an unknown source. Sometimes a virus can attach itself to the mail of somebody in your address book without their knowledge.
If this happens make sure to tell them that their e-mail address has been hijacked. Delete any e-mails and attachments that you aren't sure of. If you want to open the file, save it first and run your anti-virus program on it to make sure that your online security & internet safety hasn't been compromised.
Beware of 'phishing' scams which are designed to obtain your personal information like credit card numbers. Visit http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/alerts/phishingalrt.pdf for more information on phishing and your online security & internet safety.
