The internet is an extraordinary thing that ever happened to us in enhancing our communication, eliminate physical barrier and expand our social and business. Nowadays, it is become a daily routine for us browsing internet, sending and receiving emails, joining social group with same interest, online shopping, and others. We can not imagine doing things with internet 10 years ago. But internet also became the opportunity for others to put our privacy in danger situation.
Last year over 10 millions people are fell victim of identity theft. Everyone can be a target of internet identity theft practices. Hackers and online criminals can capture your personal identity in various ways beyond your imagination. But one distinguishing factor is that in some cases they don’t have to work hard because you give them the information yourself. Knowing what possible area that may pose to internet privacy security is something you must embrace in your internet activities. Bellow are ten internet identity theft security area that you must aware to keep your personal information save.
1. Web sites can get a lot of information about yourself. They get your personal identity by looking to information traces that you had left when you were browsing those sites. Web sites can learn where is your location, your computer OS, web browser you use, and numerous information.
2. Your internet activities history can also be tracked. This is not limited to number of sites that you have visited, what pages you browse, how many time you go over there, how long you stay and any information which related to your browsing activities and internet habit.
3. Some website imposed username login and password as one of method to put security access to their sites. Some persistent hackers have a method to steal your login name and password. Then it is just a matter of time that they will read your messages and doing nasty things with your stolen identity, pretended to be you.
4. In internet, there are so much information can be derived about you, and there will be someone who will abuse your identity for their own benefit. This bad guy then use your identity for posing to be like you in internet. This is popularly known as identity theft security.
5. Social networking websites are becoming a buzz recently. You joint them to share your personal interest or hobby with others. But someone can easily go to public site like archive.org or deja.com, to gather information regarding your personal interest or any comment you made on that particular social networking. At worst, they may abuse your personal interest by profiling your stolen identity and make contact to other members pretending to be you.
6. You may realize or not, but your personal information may be recorded in public web database. The database may have retention period of several years for people to access their archive. This publicly accessed database contained information about your names, status, ages, jobs, home address, phone number, your email address and any private information that should not be consumed by public.
7. Email is a convenient way to exchange information and offers a lot of advantages. Nowadays it become a preferred choices for anyone. But be alert, your email can be read by someone on the way to its destination. There’s hacker out there who always try to finding ways of reading your email as it is sent across internet.
8. Your web surfing habits and your online shopping profile can be gathered and sold to other party whom interested to use it. Some direct marketing companies are looking for this opportunity to sell their products directly to you, because they know your profile and spending habits. They have bunch of method to bombard you with product offering that will be sent by email or phone call.
9. Be careful if someone offer you freebies or claiming that you are winning their “special prices”. If it is to good to be true especially in internet, then you must be alarmed for such offer. At the end of the day you may pay price for others things that you don’t need.
10. This is perhaps the most scary thing if ever happen to you in internet. Someone may steal your credit card or your bank account information. Credit card identity theft is become more popular because the financial aspects involved. When you make online purchase or financial transaction over internet, there’s always a way to tap credit card information. You then shocked for the purchase that you never made or found that your bank account is empty.
