Everything That You Need To Know About Online Identity Theft
There is much that you need to know about online identity theft, and so regardless of your age, sex, or gender, you are going to want to make sure that you are as knowledgeable as possible in regards to the matter of identity theft.
What is Online Identity Theft?
Online identity theft is something that can happen at any point when you are online and someone else online finds out your personal information and then uses that to steal your identity. It is actually not that difficult for a person to steal another person’s identity, especially when it is online identity theft, and this is why it is so very important to take all of the precautions that you can.
How to Prevent Online Identity Theft From Happening to you
There are many different steps that you can take in order to prevent online identity theft from happening to you, and for one, you can make sure that you do not put your personal information over the Internet unless you really have to. Try not to use credit cards or anything of the sort online unless you really need to.
Credit cards are the biggest problem when it comes to the Internet and having identity theft happening to you, and so you not only want to make sure that you have as few credit cards as you can, but as well you want to make sure that you do not go crazy and buy everything on the Internet, as you want to limit it to as few purchases as you can.
This way you will not be giving your personal information out more than you need to over the computer, because after all hackers can hack into the site that you are using and they can then grab your personal information and steal your identity.
This is also why you want to make sure that any site that you do put your personal information out on is privacy secured, and by this it means that you will see a picture of a secured lock somewhere on the page, letting you know that they are secured and this means it is much harder for people to be able to hack into.
If you are on any site that does not look safe, then you want to make sure that you check that it is legit because you certainly do not want to give out your personal information if the site does not look safe.
Ann Marier
http://www.articlesbase.com/internet-articles/everything-that-you-need-to-know-about-online-identity-theft-128147.html
If I want to order stuff online via credit card or check without a firewall, am I asking for identity theft?
…Even though I have no viruses or detected spyware and everything else is good.
If so, is my local library's computer a safe computer to do the transactions on?
No you are safe. Many sites such as buy.com, ebay, and others have encrypting software that they run so that even if you do not have a firewall no one can read your information.
Cybertheifs have to be real good now-a-days to break through encryptions.
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No you are safe if the site is encrypted, usually there is a lock on the browser and in the adress bar there is HTTPS://.
Just to be safe library computers are accessed by a lot of users everyday.
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You can say that you are somewhat safe. However if you do not have a firewall or anti-virus software whats to stop an intruder from taking information directly from your computer as you are online? Its true when you buy something online at a secure site like ebay or bestbuy.com your safe because of the security measures these sites employ. A hacker will most likely not be able to steal your information from that company's website however he could get it after he hacks into your system. If your not protected he could hack in and see everything that you are doing completely undetected by you or your computer system. He could install malicious hardware that logs all of your keystrokes (KeyLoggers). However unless you are a highly likely target you will not be bothered. Manny hackers or "crackers" pocess the skill level to do this especially if your not hiding behind a firewall but most do not despite public misconception. And manny that do pocess this skill level will not because whats so unique and applealing to them about you? (Not that you are not) So basically just to be safe install an open source (free) Firewall and anti-vrus/spyware software also open source and your good to go.
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Network Security Specialist