The easiest way for identity thieves to steal your identity online is by getting hold of your passwords. In order to safeguard your identity, password protection must be a part of your online security measures. Passwords vary in their degree of security protection, frequency of change, and typically vary in required characteristics from system to system.
When you use the Internet you will be in danger of losing money if a sensitive password such as the one you use for payment processing transactions becomes known to a thief. Needless to say what he will do with that password. But what need to be stressed is that the thief will also try to match the same password for different accounts you might have. For example, the thief might check to see if you have a PayPal account where the same password is used.
Almost crack-proof passwords are challenging to guess and a no-brainer to remember. In other words, a solid password includes a combination of number and letters and should not be too easy to spell or capture. For obvious reasons, the worst password is the one that is non-recallable. To avoid all these hassles, people mostly use simple passwords and create blunders. This is so beause they try to include the following things in their passwords, which can be easily guessed, if the thief is your acquaintance.
Initials
Birth dates
Sequential words or number combinations (e.g., “qwerty,” “asdfg,” “12345″)
Location (city, country)
Middle name, Mother’s maiden name, etc.
Favorite pet name, celebrity or other personal interests
Dual names or words (like smithsmith, googlegoogle)
A computer virus is a computer program that can copy itself and infect a computer without the permission or knowledge of the user. The term “virus” is also used to refer to many different types of malware and adware programs.
Once your machine gets infected by a virus, it takes control and slowly tears you apart in the following ways:
It attempts to harm your system; either by slowing down the performance or completely corrupting it.
It tries to spread to multiple computers, if you are connected in a network.
Phishing: Some viruses control your system and try to steal important information from your system.
Sometimes, a virus can also defame you by stealing your sensitive information and displaying it to public. Such a virus is usually designed by hackers.
There are various ways in which you can secure your system from the onslaught of viruses which will be discussed later; till then the super tip is to use a strong antivirus program and keep it updated.
In the past week i had presented the top 10 security threats for the year 2008. Below i am mentioning a detailed report on those threats and the issues related to them. This report has been made by our Fraud Management expert: Mr. Prabhat Tiwari.
There have been lot of cases recently, where either an individual or an organization had to suffer huge losses due to some security lapses. Internet security has become extremely important, which requires identification of the possible threats and combating them. We have presented the top 10 security threats below in our endeavor to create awareness about the threats, so that everyone can avoid them to prevent occurrence of loss.
We had launched this toll free number on 17 December 2007 to combat cyber crime and mobile offenses.
With the increase in the number of PDA’s and mobiles, related crimes in this sector have also increased. Cyber crimes such as online fraud, phishing or even threat mails have witnessed an increase in recent time. Also mobile related offenses like unsolicited calls or pornographic MMS have made many suffer. According to Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT IN) hackers had attacked around 6000 websites in the last year.
But now such sufferers can call 1800 209 6789 and seek professional and individual assistance for FREE. This number currently works only in India. But we are planning to make this number accessible worldwide.
This is our endeavor in curbing cyber crimes and making the web a safer place for everyone.
