One of the most important things you can do if you connect to the Internet at all is to make sure that you have internet security in place. Internet security leads to prevention of several problems that can harm or even destroy your data. Some of the security issues for Internet users to be aware of include:

Hackers: Hackers are users who work to find loopholes in Internet security systems and exploit those loopholes. Their intentions could be anything from a desire to copy confidential information to generally just trying to cause trouble. Regardless of a hacker’s purpose, Internet users are at risk and should ensure that they safeguard their computer and personal information.

• Viruses: Viruses are computer programs designed to infiltrate unsuspecting user computers, replicate themselves, spread to other computers, destroy data, and interfere with the operation of your computer. Viruses are most commonly spread through attachments in E-mails, instant messages, or other downloads.
• Spyware: Spyware is software that plants itself on your computer and collects personal information, usually for the purpose of targeting advertising. Adware is spyware that allows advertisements to pop up on your screen based on the information it has gathered from your hard drive. Not all spyware is harmful, but it generally ends up on your computer without your consent and users need to be aware of it, as it can disrupt your computer’s performance.
• Worms: A worm is a program that replicates itself and sends itself to other computers on your network, usually undetected. While a virus has to attach itself to an existing program, a worm does not–it can replicate and spread on its own. Worms can shut down computer function because of the bandwidth they use.
• Phishing Scams: Phishing is essentially tricking a computer user into giving away valuable personal information such as bank account numbers, social security numbers, and credit card numbers. In a phishing scam, the user may receive an E-mail that appears to be sent from their bank asking for the user to confirm personal information. The goal of a phishing scam is to use this information against the victim of the scan.
• Spam: Spamming is the act of sending messages to multiple users indiscriminately in an attempt to flood the Internet with advertising or other information. While spam itself will not likely harm your computer, it can be a nuisance and distraction from the web content you’re really looking for. It’s also easy to hide viruses in links provided through spam messages.

There are ways to protect yourself from the above internet security issues. First, make sure that your computer is equipped with anti-virus software to detect and eliminate security issues. Second, make passwords difficult to guess and change your passwords often. Third, install updates as they become available. Finally, be smart about your online activities. Refuse to click on links that are from unfamiliar or suspicious sources. These issues can be hard to detect, but the available security measures should take care of most issues.

Over the past decade, identity theft has become the fastest growing financial crime and one of the fastest growing crimes overall in the United States. About 10 million Americans become victims of identity theft every year, with financial losses totaling nearly $50 billion in 2007.

One of the reasons that identity theft problems have become so widespread is because of how easy it is for sensitive information to get into the wrong hands. Criminals are getting more creative when it comes to finding ways to take advantage of having an individual’s personal information. Anyone can fall victim to identity theft, and there are several legal issues involved with this growing crime.

In 1998, Congress passed extensive identity theft laws after a few high profile cases made it a crime that needed to be addressed. Leading up to the 1998 lawmaking surrounding identity theft, 94% of financial crimes in 1996 and 1997 involved identity theft.

As more of the transactions Americans participate in each day become an electronic exchange of information, it has become easier than ever for criminals to act anonymously using another individual’s information. In Congress’ report on identity theft, they outlined many of the known methods criminals use to gather information. The report contained accounts of everything from dumpster diving and stealing mail to more sophisticated electronic information gathering tools. The report even showed involvement with organized crime rings in identity theft.

Because there are so many victims of identity theft, investigators usually don’t have the time or resources to follow the clues through every individual case. Unfortunately, most criminals are never caught for this crime.

The Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission are charged with enforcing identity theft crimes, but because of the difficulty in tracking and apprehending identity thieves, most Federal resources have been dedicated to educating the public and preventing identity theft as opposed to catching the criminals. Other law enforcement agencies, such as the FBI, have formed task forces dedicated to busting identity theft rings with various levels of success.

There are several laws on the books regarding identity theft. Many of these laws deal with the crime of identity theft itself, while others laws are designed to help victims of identity theft effectively restore credit and legal issues that can be extremely time consuming to deal with. Almost always, identity theft is accompanied by other crimes. Theft and various types of fraud are the most common crimes that are committed by identity thieves. There are also laws in place to limit losses to victims of identity theft, provided that they report the crime within a timely manner.

Victims of identity theft should contact the three credit reporting agencies and speak with their Fraud departments as soon as possible. Credit agencies will place fraud alerts on a victim’s credit report and monitor activity closely. Victims should also contact each of their individual creditor’s to close open accounts and open new accounts with new account numbers and passwords. Finally, the victim should alert both local and Federal authorities to report the crime.

Google seems to have tweaked their spam filters a bit in the last few days. I’ve noticed several messages that shouldn’t be tagged as spam going into the spam folder, a problem that I haven’t had on Gmail for quite a while.

As a matter of fact, I don’t even check it that often because of how good Google’s filtering has been. I just happened to give it a scan yesterday and found several messages that shouldn’t have been there.

Some clown recently started selling a program that lets people spam your Gmail accounts quite easily so that might have something to do with it. Google may be tightening up a little to filter out the added crap that produced.

Google’s spam filter “learns” as you tag messages as spam or not spam so it should improve again once you’ve marked the messages you want as not spam a few times.

And that actually brings up a good point about using spam filters. Whether you’re using Gmail, Hotmail, Outlook or some other email system, you should always use the buttons they offer to tag spam that gets through the filter as spam, as well as the button to tag messages that were tagged as spam incorrectly as being good.

As you do this, almost all email software filters will improve their filtering based on what you’re tagging. If you just delete the spam from your inbox, it doesn’t help improve the filter and those messages will continue to be missed.

In any case, if you’re using Gmail make sure you give your spam folder a good look for anything that got sent there by mistake. There’s nothing worse than missing an important email because it was marked as spam.

It seems like you hear about all the security threats on the internet everywhere these days.

On the news, in magazines, on the radio – everywhere you turn there seems to be all these warnings of pending doom for anyone who uses the net.

The fact is, there are a lot of threats but like any other news, all you hear about is the bad stuff. The media thrives on giving us bad news and then piling it on to make it sound like the end of the world is near.

That’s how they sell advertising.

The reality is, the threats are there but you’re not necessarily one step away from losing your identity, having your bank account cleaned out by some hacker and getting tricked into giving a bunch of money to some scammer through spam email.

A lot of this stuff is just using your common sense. The internet’s no different than any other form of communication. If someone called you on the phone and offered you something that sounded too good to be true, you’d probably think twice. You should do the same on the internet.

If you want to learn more about how to protect yourself and your family online without having to become a technical wizard, you might want to check out my Online Security Toolkit:

www.OnlineSecurityToolkit.com

It explains how you can protect yourself from things like identity theft, spyware and viruses, as well as how you can keep your kids safe from all the nasty stuff (and people) they can run into on the net.

Most antivirus software has the ability to schedule a scan to run automatically so you don’t need to think about doing it yourself. But far too many of these never actually run, leaving the computer unchecked for viruses.

The reason for this? Most of the virus scanners schedule the scan for the middle of the night, when you wouldn’t normally be using your computer.

If you turn your computer off at night, the scan may never actually take place.

Some of the programs will run the scan after you turn the computer on again, even if it missed the scheduled time. But many of them don’t – they just wait until the next scheduled scan, which of course doesn’t happen again if the computer is off.

If you don’t leave your computer on 24 hours a day, make sure you check to see what time your virus scan is scheduled to run. If it’s set for a time that your computer is more than likely turned off, change it to a time when it’s probably on but you’re not likely to be using it (during dinnertime, for example).

If you use an antivirus program that doesn’t let you change the scheduled scan and it’s set for a time that your computer is more than likely going to be off, you have two options.

First, get a new antivirus program. There are lots of good ones, so if you’re not happy with the features on the one you use, you can always replace it.

Second, leave your computer on overnight once a week. It won’t get scanned every day, but a weekly scan is better than no scan at all.

Balancing your checkbook every month makes sense for many reasons, but most people have never thought about it in terms of identity theft.

If you’re not checking your bank statements every month, it’s far too easy for someone to steal it from your mailbox without you realizing it. Mail theft is one of the most common ways that identity thieves can get information about you.

If your mail is left in an unsecured place and you don’t pick it up until you get home at the end of the day, how easy would it be for a scammer to pick through it and take the items that would be helpful to them?

By getting into the habit of checking your statements every month, you’ll notice if it’s missing.

If it doesn’t show up when you expect it, there are a few things you should do:

1. Check with your bank to see if there was a delay of some sort.
2. If they did in fact send it on time, double-check for other things that might be missing such as credit card statements.
3. Check with the post office and see if there is a change of address form on file for your address. Why would there be? Someone could have put a fraudulent change of address on file for you so they receive all your mail. If this happens, notify the post office of the fraud immediately.
4. Contact your local police and report the mail theft.
5. Contact your bank and let them know what happened. You’ll want to change your PIN codes at the very least, but you may even need to change account numbers so the information that was stolen won’t be of any use.