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Easy tips for Online Privacy Protection

June 16, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Most people around the world use Internet for various reasons. It has now become very important to protect the online privacy. Online protection is very important for anyone who wants to protect their identity. There are many malicious programs and people online that can harm, delete, and damage any content in the computer. Here are few steps to protect online privacy.

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First important and basic step is to create password that cannot be easily cracked by malicious codes or hackers. A good password is one that is a combination of letters, numbers, and symbols. Often, hackers cannot crack a password like this. It is better to avoid name or personal details as password and passwords should be changed periodically.

Some people tend to save their passwords in files. This is not a good practice and it is always better to hide passwords. Additionally, an individual should not share their passwords to anyone, even to their close friends or family members. If a person has shared the password, then it is better to change it immediately.

Email is another section where most hackers try to attack systems. The users should not open attachments from the malicious or unknown emails. Email protection programs should be enabled. While browsing, people should share their private information only to the trusted and reliable website.

Firewall program and trusted anti-virus should be installed on the system. Today, there are many programs available that helps the user to browse the Internet anonymously without sharing any personal information. Finally, it is a must for the computer users to do regular scans.

 

 

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Tips for Choosing a Good Password

June 12, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Password is one of the important factors for online protection. A password tells who the user is and how the system is protected. It becomes very important to safeguard the password as it is the key to access the online accounts. Anyone who has or can guess passwords can easily access personal details and can damage the entire system.

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Tips for Protecting the Passwords

First important step is not to share the passwords with anyone. Next important step is that the password created should be easily remembered. Most people tend to forget complex passwords and they write it down to remember. This is not a good action as anyone can gain access to passwords. Some scam emails may advice the user to change passwords, but the user should not react to such mails. Finally, passwords should be something very difficult for others to guess.

What should be avoided while Creating Password?

There are certain things that should be avoided while choosing passwords. They are words from the dictionary, real name, user name, words from the cracking dictionary, spouse name, and mirrored word from the dictionary,

How to Choose a Good Password?

A good password should be at least six characters long, should be the mixture of letters, symbols, and numbers, symbols should be added in the middle of the password, and deliberately misspelling the password. It is better to combine several techniques while creating passwords and even an uncommon phrase can be squeezed in to passwords. The uppercase and lowercase letters can be used alternatively in the passwords.

 

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Protecting Your Computer

January 21, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Protecting your computer, or more importantly the data contained within, is a very important aspect of daily computing. The first and most important aspect of securing your computer is physical access. If you can deny physical access to your computer, you make things quite a bit harder on would be thieves. Sadly, this can be very hard for the average user, and even in fairly secure corporate situations, there are ways to use social engineering to get around most security measures to gain physical access to machines on premises. So unless you can find a way to build your computer into a safe, the next best line of defense is to use good passwords and encryption to keep data out of the wrong hands.

With encryption there are two methods you can take: file and folder, or whole disk. Each has its strengths and weaknesses. File and folder level encryption uses a separate password from your system login. This makes it a bit more work to access, but adds one more password for a thief to crack. These files have to be decrypted to access and change, and then have to be re-encrypted when you’re done. Whole disk encryption generally relies on the system password you log in with, allowing access to your files only to someone who has that password.

Neither of those methods is worth anything if you don’t have a good password that only you know. A truly good password is something that uses mixed case, numbers, and special characters, all random. The longer the better, and generally no less than eight characters, though 11 for a minimum is better. All passwords for the different accounts you have online should be different as well, because if you use the same password in one place and it gets figured out, it will give free access to the thief to any other sites you use that have the same password.

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Protecting Your Privacy When Browsing The Internet

January 12, 2011 By Leave a Comment

No matter what sort of career you have, or what you like to do in your free time, there’s a good chance that you’ll have to use a computer to access the Internet at least occasionally. This can seem a bit intimidating, especially if you are of an age where you did not grow up using computers. However, you’ll likely find that computers are fairly simple to use. That said, there are still some safeguards you should keep in mind in order to protect your personal safety when you are online.

For starters, choose passwords that are unique to you and that would be hard for others to guess. Also make sure that your password is not a part of your e-mail or user name, and vice versa. The best passwords incorporate a combination of both uppercase and lowercase letters, and perhaps a symbol or number to make them even more complex. Some web browsers have functionality that allows users to store passwords in the browser’s memory so that they do not have to be typed out on each visit. Although this seems convenient, it is actually not a good habit to get into because in theory, it could allow an unwanted person to get access to your data without having to type anything into the fields on their own.

Also, try to remember to periodically clear our your browsing history, cookies and temporary Internet files. Not to be confused with your favorite places or bookmarked sites. most of the abovementioned files are those that are collected without your conscious knowledge as you browse the Internet. By deleting the files, you will be protecting your privacy online, and also helping your browser to load pages faster.

Finally, consider putting your whole computer under password protection, so that a specific word or phrase must be typed to gain access to the computer and its contents.

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Choosing Safe Internet Passwords

January 11, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Chances are, when you use a computer, you will be accessing some websites that require you to register with an e-mail and a password. Some workplaces even ask their employees to keep their computers locked down so that data cannot be compromised when you are away from your desk. As you might imagine, it is very important to choose your passwords wisely. Failure to do so could lead hackers to sensitive data such as your bank account, e-mail program, or personal pictures.

Some websites set parameters for passwords, such as saying that they must be comprised of a certain number of letters or numbers, or must include a symbol of some sort. Some websites even go further and require their users to use uppercase letters, lowercase letters, numbers and symbols all at the same time. At first thought, you may feel that this does more harm than good, but thankfully the majority of popular websites will allow their users to either reset their passwords or answer a “secret question” (set by the user during the registration process) in order to retrieve their password. Still other options may provide you with a specfic phrase that is intended to help you recall the password.

The most important thing to keep in mind when choosing a password is to mix it up a bit. In other words, don’t use the same phrase or word for every website you visit. Many websites will inform you if your password is “strong enough” to prevent others from guessing it, and if not, will suggest that you alter it in some way. Finally, for obvious reasons, one of the most compelling reasons to use a variety of passwords is that in the event that a hacker is able to figure out one password, they will not have access to all the websites that you visit.

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Protecting Emails From Being Hacked

December 17, 2010 By Leave a Comment
A keylogger example of a screencapture, which ...
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Emails hold valuable details pertaining to personal information, business transactions, bank statement and even family and private pictures which are in no way meant for strangers. Hence emails now hold huge importance in peoples lives. Many websites require email addresses to be used as usernames, if a person loses his password, the website gives the option to reset the password by going into the mail. If a fraudster or a criminal finds this password, he can use it to get access to as many other accounts as he wants if he gets access to you mail.

The main reason for people getting their email hacked is because they do not know how to protect their email addresses. It is not because of hacking that most people lose their accounts, but because of trapping. People are fooled into giving up their passwords themselves to hackers. One of the main methods of doing this is by spoofing a website that misleads the user to give up important details regarding the passwords by creating fake log in pages. These pages are just like the original design but differ in one fact that they copy your passwords. They might even lead to the genuine site alter, which lets the user never know that he just gave his username and password to hackers. Hence remember to keep in mind to never enter into your email address from other sites. Instead of doings so, you can go to the site directly by typing in the email address. Another method is by using key loggers that memorizing every thing that you enter into the computer. Key loggers is the easiest method of stealing passwords that is employed in public computers and such. Another huge mistake people do is to use passwords such as “123456″, “password” and many such common passwords that can be easily found out by hackers.

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