Identity theft is a major issue, and has been increasing with alarming regularity in the past few years. Along with identity theft, there is also the possibility of someone also using your financial accounts to purchase items online. While it may be impossible to completely stop someone from getting at your information, there are several things that you can do to help protect yourself while online.
What You Can Do To Protect Yourself Online
- Only visit trusted websites. This is probably one of the most important points. If a website doesn’t look right, or you have a bad feeling about visiting such a site, then you should just close down the browser or leave the site. Web browsers are starting to warn its users when they visit a bad site, but they may not catch them all. It is important to only visit sites that you trust. Visiting untrusted sites may allow the site to install malware, or steal you personal information if you fill out a form.
- Buy items from reputable websites. This is an additional point to the first one, but it pertains to making purchases online. Many sites offer goods and services for sale, but if you don’t trust the site, find another trusting site with the same product for sale. The great thing about the Internet is that more than one site will usually have the same product/service so you do have options.
- Ensure encryption is enabled when providing personal information. When ordering online, make sure your web browser indicates that the web page is using SSL encryption to protect your data. A common indication for browsers to show that a web page is encrypted is by displaying a lock icon somewhere. Look up the indicator for your web browser so you understand what you need to look out for. If possible, you should also enable encryption for your e-mail and social networks. Facebook has the option to encrypt your session if you choose.
- Minimize how much information you provide. This point is more for those active in social networks. Only provide information online that you are comfortable with providing. If you don’t want to provide your phone number, for instance, then don’t provide it. This also goes for making purchases. I try to use PayPal as much as possible, that why I don’t need to share my credit card information to many online sites when I make a purchase. With PayPal, my information is in one location, and I would need to log into PayPal to complete the purchase. My credit card information is not shared to the site where I make my purchase.
- Use a different, long password for each site. It is important that you don’t use the same password for every site. If someone were to gain access to one of your accounts, then they would be able to gain access to other accounts that you use. Chances are you also use the same ID with different sites, so using the same password and ID on every site pretty much opens the door for abuse. If you have trouble remembering different passwords, then ready why I use LastPass to manage my passwords. In addition to strong a passwords, I also use YubiKey for two-factor authentication.
The above lists 5 points that you should think about to help you protect your identity while online. Do you have additional points that you can add to this list?
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on June 22, 2011 at 10:33 am
very well written . online security must be given attention. to add something, dont download crack etc which are suspicious
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on June 23, 2011 at 11:08 am
Thanks for the tip. I agree, you should only download something that you trust. If you are suspicious about a file, don’t download it.
on June 22, 2011 at 3:26 pm
Thank you for your great tips. To protect yourself online, take care from any type of scam and protect your information as high as possible for safe.
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on June 23, 2011 at 11:13 am
Scams are common online, especially phishing scams. Many thefts and other issues arise because people provide too much information on such scam sites. Understanding which sites are a scam, and which ones are legitimate is important to protecting yourself.
on June 22, 2011 at 5:19 pm
I was just reading about the FBI seizing LulzSec’s website servers today. Out of curiosity I went to their website and they had posted the passwords and emails of thousands of users. If any of them had used the same password in any other major services, all their accounts would have essentially been hacked as well. A scary thought indeed.
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on June 23, 2011 at 11:16 am
I recently read about LulzSec and how they have thousands of IDs and passwords. This is a reason why using the same password for multiple accounts is a bad idea. A good password management tool will allow you to easily create, and manage many passwords for different accounts.
on June 23, 2011 at 11:42 pm
Everyone is dreaming to have a protection for their identity…We make sure that we have a software that can protect us and give maximum security…
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on June 24, 2011 at 7:58 am
I agree, we must ensure that our software does protect us and provides the maximum security available.
on June 24, 2011 at 7:45 am
I agree with using PayPal as much as possible as I realize some websites actually store the credit card information in their databases O_o
The only problem is my PayPal normally have US dollar balance in it but not AUD.. don’t really want to pay that conversion fee *sigh*
Twitter: michaelaulia
on June 24, 2011 at 8:00 am
I’m in a similar boat with regards to using USD, but I haven’t seen a conversion fee for CAD, but I haven’t really looked for one. I’m always wary about web sites and how they store my information. For credit cards, I’d rather them not store my credit card info, but if they do then it must be encrypted. For passwords, they should be storing a hash value instead of the password.
on June 24, 2011 at 9:12 pm
But it may surprise you to know that identity theft is also a problem in the workplace…. …We tend to trust the people we work with but its surprising how often identity thieves take advantage of that very trust. Thats not to say all of your coworkers are thieves of course — they probably arent but extreme circumstances can drive people to do things they would normally not consider.
on July 29, 2011 at 8:10 pm
What i started doing a few years ago is this: i bought a notebook and every website i register to i enter a new username and password which i write in the notebook because it’s impossible to remember all of them. I was forced to do this because the admin of a certain website went and abused my trust, logging into account with my password, which was the same on every website, including his.
But the change was a good one and now i can sleep better at nights. Might seem i’m overdoing it with the notebook, but it’s not that big of a deal.
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on July 30, 2011 at 11:01 pm
A notebook is one way, to record passwords. It is important especially if you use a different password for each site. I use LastPass myself so I can access my login credentials from any computer with an Internet connection.
on August 7, 2011 at 4:10 am
Nice info. It’s really important that we need to keep our identity safe online.
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