In today’s world of computers, information, and high speed connections, the Internet can be quite an overwhelming place sometimes. Imagine the possibilities; millions of sites, millions of users, millions of opportunities. The Internet is a place of opportunity for business people, relaxation for ordinary citizens, and expression for a social network surfing teenager. Most of the sites that you visit have good intentions and are safe. You can be assured that you will never get a virus from logging onto Google and doing a quick search. There are many other websites that are not so safe though; some are actually dedicated to luring you in with lucrative content, and then stealing your data or simply crashing your computer. With this data, they could steal your identity, find your location in real life, and a host of other bad things. Just from your Internet files, they could find your password to your online banking and go in and make huge withdrawals, and you wouldn’t notice until the huge bill for your tiny bank account at the end of the month. Unfortunately, you may not know they have found your real life location until it is too late. There are ways to avoid these problems though, and you certainly don’t have to succumb to a hacker’s evil methods and tactics.

First of all, notice the lock icon in the bottom right corner of your screen when you visit some sites. When this icon is not present, your information is completely open and unsecured and will float through the Internet air like gossamer, just waiting and asking a computer criminal to take hold and use it for malicious intention.  This lock means the site is encrypted, and this means all of your data is scrambled so that if intercepted, it would look like a big pile of useless mush to the interloper.

Next, don’t believe the widespread fallacy that deleting an object from your computer deletes it. This simply puts it in to your recycle bin, and from here it can be totally deleted. Until then, it is fully restorable and is often done so, as this is much overlooked by most computer users.

One more important thing to consider is the elusive privacy policy. You know, the thing you click accept to without even reading it? Some of these are mundane and pretty basic, but some hold some more insidious notes.

The best thing to do for Internet safety though is to use a change IP proxy. This will change your IP address, thus hiding you from the rest of the Internet; no one can harm you if they don’t know you are there! An IP changer will also bolster your encryption “lock” services to a much higher bit, which will make it even harder to crack.

Be Sociable, Share!

•