Most of our personal or professional work is done on computers. We keep important files, data and other sorts of crucial and critical information on the computers. We keep many of our personal photographs on our computers and much more stuff which is likely to be very personal in nature. In today’s world computer information theft is becoming a pain with each passing day as the hackers are coming up with new technologies and ways to steal one’s personal information to get something out of it. It is said that precaution is better than cure, and this fits in this situation also. It is always good to have adequate security measures on your computer so that no one steals your information and use it incorrectly.
In this post I will give you some steps and ideas to keep your information safe on the computer and protect it from Internet theft.
Step 1: The first and the foremost thing is not to share your personal information on the Internet. Trust me this is the best way. We often end up entering our information like name, age, location, phone number etc on many websites which require us to register before accessing the content. Try entering fake information here so that nobody knows about your personal details.
Step 2: Limit access to your personal information on social networking sites like Facebook, Orkut etc., so that not everybody can view the details about you. It is good if you not even let everything displayed in front of your friends as they might forward it to someone else.
Step 3: If you work on any public computer, never ever save your passwords in the browser. Browsers offer the user to save the password when they login to any website, but make sure that you do not save any password. If possible then always clear the history and temporary files while leaving the computer after work. Also make sure that you do not have auto fill feature turned on your computer because it still can save the information which you enter on various websites
Step 4: Always keep good firewalls running on your computer. Firewall is one of the best means of keeping your computer safe from intruders and it lets you know if someone tries to access your computer from somewhere. Installing a Firewall and keeping it running is not enough because you need to keep it updated as well. Always update your firewall and the antivirus software updated because they might miss on the new infections if not fully updated.
Step 5: When it comes to online purchasing, make sure that you shop from trusted websites only. If you shop from any unauthentic website then they might steal your card information and misuse it without your consent. Credit card information should not be given on any other site except the ones which use legitimate payment gateways for processing the transactions.
