Protecting your Online Privacy
Protecting your Online Privacy
With the increasing popularity of online banking along with more and more malicicous viruses and the newest threat, spyware, online privacy has become more and more of a necessity for the home computer user. Anybody with an unprotected connection to the Internet can easily be vulnerable to attacks from hackers, spyware, or have their every move on the web tracked by online advertising companies. Although the lack of good online security and privacy controls can have dire consequences it is easy to remedy.
The first step to keep your computer and your data secure and private is keeping your operating system up to date. Now this doesn't mean buying the newest version of Windows as soon as it's released. From time to time security vulnerabilities that hackers can take advantage of are discovered. To combat this Microsoft releases patches to close security holes in their software. To distribute security patches easily Microsoft has a service called Windows Update. Open up Internet Explorer go to the tools menu and select 'Windows Update' The home page for Windows Update opens up. Click on the 'Scan for Updates' link and your computer is scanned for any security updates that Windows, Internet Explorer or Media Player may need. Updates are downloaded and installed automatically.
After your operating system and other programs are updated to close the security holes, the next thing that is needed to protect data is something called a firewall. There are two kinds firewalls. A Software firewall is a program installed on a computer that keeps outside intruders from entering by closing unused communications channels called IP ports and keeps sensitive data in by granting or denying permission to programs to send data to or receive data from the Internet. Hardware firewalls are devices that connect between a computer network and an Internet connection and keep sensitive data in and keeps intruders out. A good software firewall called Zone Alarm can be downloaded from www.zonelabs.com for free.
Once there is a firewall in place to keep the hackers out the next thing is to get good anti-virus software and to keep it up to date to protect against new viruses as they get released. There are many good anti-virus program that you can buy wherever software is sold, but there are also some very good anti-virus programs that can be downloaded for free. One of these is called AVG anti-virus it can be downloaded at www.grisoft.com. While using Anti-virus software may seem like common sense, but there is a great number of computer users that don't do even this, and that's why so many viruses spread like wild fire when they are first released.
While viruses and hackers have been a threat to peoples' sensitive data for years, there's a new threat, Spyware. These are programs that get installed on peoples' computers from peer to peer file sharing programs such as Kazaa, Grokster, or from other freeware and shareware programs. Even just ordinary surfing can deliver spyware to your computer through drive by downloads. Spyware programs run in the background and monitor how your computer is used and what web sites you visit. This data is sent back to the makers of the spyware programs and all this data is sold to marketing companies. As nefarious as this may sound there are some other nasty things that can happen when your computer has spyware loaded on it. Many spyware programs will blast you with pop up ads. While this may be annoying, but when multiple spyware programs are loaded on a computer it slows down and starts crashing more often.
Removing spyware is just as easy as getting it in the first place. A company called Lavasoft has a program called Ad-Aware that will scan the computer and remove any spyware that is found. Ad-Aware can be downloaded for free at www.lavasoftusa.com/support/download. Once installed open Ad-Aware and click on the 'Start' button in the Ad-Aware window, Then click on the 'Next' button and then Ad-Aware starts scanning your computer for Spyware. When Ad-Aware is finished scanning a list of everything that was found, every folder, file and registry entry that belongs to any known spyware program. Check off everything and click the next button to remove the spyware. Then you will discover that just a little bit of spyware can make using your computer a lot less pleasant.
In addition to Spyware programs Spyware removal utilities such as Ad-Aware will also find and remove Advertising tracking cookies. Cookies are small files of information that web sites store information about you on your computer. Online advertising companies such as Doubleclick.net use cookie to track what web sites you are visiting and what ads you've seen. Television advertisers don't have the ability to track what shows and channels you are watching second by second, so the online advertising companies shouldn't have that kind of power, but there is a way to reclaim your computer from the online advertisers.
Open up Internet Explorer 6.0 and go to the tools menu and select 'Internet Options' Click on the 'Privacy' tab. In the 'Web Sites' section at the bottom click on the 'Edit' button. In the window that appears in the area marked 'Address of Web Site' type in doubleclick.net and then repeat for every domain name listed at the end of this page. Protecting your online security and privacy is one of the most important things you have to do but it is easy it just takes a little bit of time to learn about the threats and how to keep yourself safe.
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