Most of us spend so much of our time browsing social networking sites, registering online memberships and sharing our personal data via net to our friends and relatives. But how do we protect our personal information in the Internet?
For many of us, the Internet has been our way of life used primarily for emailing, blogging, online chatting and a lot more. These activities help us to communicate in today’s fast-paced environment. Few of us are aware that venturing into the dynamic world wide web, security and privacy issues are hot topics.
Long-time Internet users have seen how information security has evolved from the early days of identifying viruses and web defacers up to this day tracking theft, privacy and fraud cases, which are perpetrated by cyber crime syndicates.
Lasting Effect
Once you post your personal data online, these will stay there ‘for life.’Still many people do not get this reality. Imagine an information you might have posted 10 years from now, which includes your employment history, location, or other details regarding your family members. Such details can be easily extracted from any account you create in the web.
Many Filipino Internet users are faithfully filling out online information forms when joining social networking sites like Multiply.com, Friendster.com, Facebook.com, Myspace.com, Hi5.com and many others. These personal data entered to the sites are the targets of black hackers or cyber crime syndicates, who are doing all their efforts to hack these sites for a possible crime.
Careful when Posting
Most bloggers update their sites regularly. Uploading files in a blogsite, whether text, photo or video is very handy by using a desktop, laptop or mobile phone. Hackers find it very easy when doing their data gathering. This behavioral issue is more nebulous than logic-driven technical threat.There are no quick fixes for identity theft. It is all a matter of being aware on what you post on the wild web.The first line of defense against hackers is the password. Forgetting it spells a disaster.
Setting Passwords
Hackers enjoy cracking passwords. There are two methods of doing this. They can either employ (1) dictionary attacks (based on known possible passwords, such as directory words, names, calendar dates, etc.); or (2) brute force attacks (all the possible character combinations based on known parameters). There are many effective, easy-to-use-tools that are available in the web. However, cracking a password that offers billions of combination with the use of 3GHz processors usually take days to collide it.
Conventional environments in computers involve parallel multiprocessors, which can be faster but would still take days to crack passwords. Building a machine with large capacities, i.e., server grade, is expensive but would be extremely cheap if the target is an international financial institution, rendering the processing time of less than 24 hours.
Office Confidential Files
Keep in mind that personal information in our computers are being logged. Operating systems have different means of storing the logged files. Imagine your laptop or desktop is being used by someone else or worst compromised how easy it is to send out the information from your terminal over a network or the web.
Computer threats are everywhere, most particularly in the web. The best protection is identifying your attitude towards the use of modern technology. The most effective information protection tip boils down to the online user.Before posting anything in the web, think ahead of the repercussions of doing this.Be aware of the photos, videos, blogs or just anything you want to tell the world. Is it worth posting? At the end of the day, let’s hope there is a privacy-focused silver lining somewhere in the world ‘wild’ web.•
