How To Protect Your Identity Online

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If you use the Internet, you probably know that your computer is very vulnerable to various threats and viruses.Viruses and special programs are created by thieves who might be after stealing your personal data. Theycan intercept credit card numbers, banking information or other important information. They can also penetrate into the address book of your e-mail and steal email addresses of other users to use later for more attacks.So it is wise to protect your computer as best as you can.

Use antivirus software

Thist ype of program, working on yourcomputer, always protects it from viruses and ensures that they are not infiltrating your machine through an e-mail program or via the Internet; if it finds a virus, the program will immediately notify you and then delete it. Antivirus software is your firstline of defense against various troubles from the Internet.

Firewall

Most modern computers come with a preinstalled firewall program, but if yours did not, then you should install one as soon as possible. This program protects your computer by specifying pre-configured information that comes to your computer. It protects from unwanted or dangerous flows of data and alerts you when an outside source tries to perform unauthorized actions on your computer.

Protect your email

You can also contribute to improving the protection of the computer by taking a few precautions when working with e-mail. You should not open unknown emails with attachments. Never run any files attached to an email, unless you are absolutely sure who sent it.

Protect social security number

It may seem a surprise, but someone gets a hold of your social security number they can find out literally all about you. Where did you go for lunch, where and what your credit card paid for; finding out information about your financial situation also will not be problem at all. So remember if you found something on the web and want to buy it there is no need to provide your social security number.

Diversify passwords

If you use a simple password for email accounts and social networking sites it is the same as using your PO mailbox key to lock your front door.  Leaving a lot of personal information online, you run the risk to make your personal data available to fraudsters, and keeping an easily picked password to access that information is just inviting them in.

Anti-Theft software

In recent years, many software development companies offer such service as Anti-Theft.  The most trusted and popular are:

• McAfee Anti-TheftFile Protection safeguards valuable files such as tax records, photos and personal documents on your PC against thieves, hackers, and others
• MacKeeperis a bundle of most important system utilities that perform different tasks on your Mac.One of thefeaturesis Anti-Theft that will track your computers location and even make an iSight snapshot of the thief if possible.
• Norton Snuko Anti-Theftwhich you can read about on their official website.

In addition, remember the following general rules of behavior on the Internet

• While sending anyone your personal information or confidential information, ensure that the recipient-is really the one who is intended to receive it
• Adequately treat the spam suggestions: do not believe in theunexpected gains, do not respondto offers of free goods or cheap drugs
• do not install unofficial additions and improvements to games or web browsers
• check theauthenticity of the address bar of your browser when entering personal data on a gamesite
• while in a public domain, limit theamount of informationyou disclose about yourself
• sign up for two email addresses- a private for correspondence (private and obscure which you will not make publicly known), and the public- for public activities(forums, chats and so on).
• use only strong passwords(letters, numbers, upper case letters and symbols all add to the strength of your password)
• for various accounts and services, use different passwords
• do not giveyour login and passwordto third parties

Be yourself, because only you can do it the best way possible.

This article is a part of a series of publications on computer technology issues developed by Tamika Clifford who is a freelance journalist and editor on a number of web resources. Interests of Tamika include technology development and modern science state . To learn more about her writing visit this site