We are already familiar with horrifying stories of people whose sensitive information get leaked into the hands of unscrupulous operators. Who would not be horrified if you wake one day to find your credit card being charged with thousands of purchases you never made? Or, in smaller scale, noticing that your email address is sending high-volume of messages to different email address you are not aware of. All over the internet, hackers, scammers and spammers are making a feast on people who are vulnerable enough. As of late, there were hackers who successfully penetrated Facebook. What are your ways of protecting your online privacy?
First, I set complex passwords, and have a unique password per site. And, I'm very careful about where I visit and what I do. When I visit a site, it's usually been referred to me several times and I've heard about it. What do you do to protect your online privacy?
I also use complex passwords. I use a firewall, an anti-virus, and an anti-malware program. I figure triple protection is better than one. I also try to use common sense when reading my emails. And every night use a program called Ccleaner to delete my cookies.
Hopefully, I will be smarter than to reveal any real damaging information on Facebook or other online site. Though it's kind of hard not to reveal some things considering how many forums actually list your real birthdate on the profile by default. That information could be valuable if someone were trying to hack your known accounts.
I use Roboform to store my passwords. It helps me keep intricate passwords to my accounts. Performing virus and spyware scans on the computer regularly also helps. So true. Even if the site assures you total privacy, don't post anything that you are not comfortable with anyone seeing. Sites can be hacked and sometimes the computer doesn't log you out properly.
I am using McAfee complete protection along with their firewall and site adviser for the last 3 years. Never had an issue. I know Kasper is the best you can get, but they are a bit too expensive for people like me. And about credit cards.... don't use them if you are not careful. In 99% of the cases it is people who behave very carelessly getting ripped off through credit card scams. Never happened to me. Hope it will stay that way!
It's really important to not use the same password on multiple websites. It's not only because the damage is broader if your password gets stolen, you don't know if the system admin can see your password and figure out other websites you might use it on. Know which of your passwords are common targets for hackers and make those extra hard to guess. Roboform as mentioned above is good to track all the many passwords, another I later switched due to strong ipad/iphone support is Lastpass.
I love Lastpass. It's so much easier to work with this type of program instead of having every password the same or storing them unsafely on your system. Protecting my online privacy is a must when it comes to the Internet. It's so easy to be taken advantage of because of the anonymity of others.
I've been a victim of hacking. I reported the hacker to whatever e-mail and blog services were invaded. Then, I changed my passwords and now I make sure I sign in and out of sites and I never allow even my own computer to remember me most of the time.
First and foremost, do not post your private information on social networking sites. Some people keep amazing me by the sheer amount of personal information they have on their profiles. To make matters worst, there are a lot of folks who have their privacy settings set as public. One should never use the same username and password everywhere, it poses a massive security risk. And if you cannot think of a complex password, there are a lot of free password generators which can help you to choose an appropriate password for your account. Recently, some security experts have created a website called pwnedlist where they have an extensive and ever growing database of accounts which have been hacked. You can cross check if any of your accounts have been compromised over there.
