by Gino K

Created on: May 22, 2008

There are many reasons for us to protect sensitive information from Hackers, who are always finding news ways to enter unauthorized into a users computer. Most of our sensitive data can include information like, where we live, SSN (Social Security Number), Date of birth, Place of birth, Passport Number or even our banking details (online too). The list can keep going because every person has a completely different idea about, what can be their personal digital data. For Someone their personal data can even be their phone number! It usually depends on the user to decide that.

So, the most important reasons for us to protect our digital data can be as follows:-

1. Scams - These are fraudulent programs or even web sites that promise the user something which will never be actually given to the user or done as the user expects that program to do. For example, a Scam can be an online program which agrees to keep all the sensitive data submitted by the user to the web site "secret". But then it would turn out that this sensitive data is shared with other third party companies for reasons such as advertisement or in other words Spam ( This will be discussed later ).

2. Spam - Spam is basically unsolicited Email which is received by the user without his or her permission or will. These Email can not only be having advertisement but they can also have files that are potentially dangerous to a users computer. Most of the Spam these days are easily stopped by the Email service providers itself but some are not so easy to be stopped. Anyway most of the stopped Spam is automatically put into a separate folder by the Email service providers themselves, But we must be careful in deleting these messages because some of those messages may not be Spam. There might be an Email sent to you by a friend or anybody you know for that matter who is not listed in your contact list. Basically that's who the Spam blocking system works. Emails from people not listed in our contact list are automatically considered as Spam. This is something that has it's advantages an disadvantages, because the Spam can be stopped but the other Emails that are not Spam need to be stopped in these Spam Emails. If these procedures seem to strict for you, it can be changed as the users wish. The level of security can be changed and thus, most of the Email won't be taken into consideration as Spam. But this can cause your inbox to be invaded by many unwanted messages, so choose wisely.

3. And last but not the least of all, Identity Theft - This is something that we all need to be careful about, because there are many Hackers who will use this stolen identity for wrong purposes. First of all, let me explain what I mean by Identity Theft. Identity theft is a process by which a users sensitive information is "extracted" without the users knowing it. This data can then be used by the people who stole it to do thing the honest user wouldn't do, thus, keeping the one who is to be blamed on the safer side. Basically the honest user get blamed for something he or she has never done.

In order to be protected from threats such as the ones mentioned above we can user Internet Security providing software such as Norton 2008. (I'm still using Norton 2007, and I find it really helpful). These softwares are developed for the main purpose of protecting user from above mentioned threats. It is fundamental to have such software before even thinking about connecting your computer to the Internet. I hope this was useful and most of all be prudent while using the Internet.

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