In this age of information the world is full of scams to gather data and use it against you. There are a few common tactics that are used to gather the information used by the unscrupulous to steal your identity. Some involve your participation some are done without your knowledge. Let’s take a look at a few.
Everyone by now has heard of the e-mails sent out by the Nigerian princess or “Government Official” promising to deposit the proceeds of a bank draft into your account and split the money, all you need to do is send them your bank account number. While this would seem to be an obvious fraud the technique of sending an email to the unsuspecting, known as phishing still exists. Also known as “spoofing” the bad guys have gotten much more sophisticated. Rather than rescuing a damsel in distress now the letter comes in the form of an official looking correspondence from a trusted friend or web site. With claims of a misplaced order number or garbled address they ask for your personal information . In the hopes of catching the odd lucky unaware fish, they cast a wide net using mass mailing software. Barring the direct contact some of these villains surf the web and gather information about you from social networking sites and then attack. They spend their days trolling myspace or facebook to learn enough about their potential victims to hack their personal accounts.
You may have heard of a recent example of this, the hacking of the Republican Vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin’s email by guessing her security question and answer on Google. There are some things you can do to protect yourself. The obvious, limit the number of places and types of personal information you put on your social network pages. Use coded answers to your security questions such as an anagram of your home town rather than your actual birth place. When it comes to phishing expeditions if you encounter unsolicited emails asking for personal or financial information treat them with extreme caution. If they are asking for your password, social security number or other personal identifiers go back to the web site and enter the data through the account maintenance page of the company.
Look for a sign that you are on a secure server when giving out things like credit card numbers. Following these few techniques as well as reporting suspicious contacts to your ISP can greatly enhance your experience surfing the web.
