Some advice to help you protect yourself on your PC
In this article I will give you a few tips to help reduce the chances of you becoming a victim of the Internets dangers. I’ve been a victim of fraud once and if you follow these tips it should greatly reduce the chance of you joining me.
Personal Security
Identity theft is a big risk in this day an age. A simple definition of identity theft is somebody using your personal information to complete a transaction you have not authorised. For an indivivual to steal your identity they need very little information. You should make sure you are very careful with the following information:
Full Name: Don’t use your full name unless needed. Abbreviate your name for example Alex instead of Alexander.
Date of Birth: Don’t use your exact date of birth. Some websites will ask for this but it’s generally to verify your age so use the same year and change the month and day. It’s worth having a ficticious date of birth that you can remember as sometimes websites will ask for this information to allow you to log in when you have forgotten your password.
Bank Details: The only two people who you should trust with you bank account number and sort code is you and your bank. I would reccomend that you use Paypal or a credit card for any online transaction. Both of these will refund any money lost due to fraud (eventually). It’s a good idea to read the small print on the credit card contract to see how they deal with Internet fraud. Remember every time you use a card online you are giving details to a third party, and if they are compromised or unscrupulous you could compromise your credit card details. Don’t use your current account details on unrecognised sites as reclaiming money from any fraud can take some time and if your current account is emptied (as mine was once) it can cause embarresment at the supermarket!
Credit/debit card PIN Number: This is the number you have to type to withdraw money from a cashpoint. There’s only one person who should know it. YOU! If the bank proves you told a third party your PIN you will be liable for any fruadulent transactions on you card.
Any other personal Information: The first tip is not to give any more information than is required. When you submit personal information online some of it will not be mandatory. Typically mandatory information will have a symbol next to it. Only fill these ones in and don’t fill them in if you are not confident about the website. If I am unsure of a website will NEVER give them any information about me.
Passwords: This is an important one. Many people have their online accounts broken into because they use weak passwords. I will give you a few tips to help you make sure you don’t fall foul of this:
Don’t use the same password for all of your online logins. We all have problems remembering passwords but the best trick is to have three you use. One password for secure sites you trust like your bank, your supermarket and your paypal account. Another for you Email, Facebook, and Skype accounts and the last password for untrusted accounts on the Internet such as message forums for your personal hobbies. These 3 catagories of passwords allow you to separate the most critical accounts form the least. If one of your personal hobby accounts (with weaker security) has a security breach and your password is compromised then it will not have devastating consequences for you.
In each of these three passwords use UPPER and lower case, numbers and special characters such as !”£$%^&*(). The reason you should do this is that hackers will often use something called a ‘bot’. This is a program that will try to break into your account by rapidly bombarding your login trying random passwords. If you use characters outside the 27 letters of the alphabet you are decreasing the chance of one of these ‘bots’ from guessing your password on a massive level. I won’t go into the figures but a random selection of upper and lower case characters and special characters makes a password very difficult to discover even with a ‘bot’.
While we are on the subject of the passwords avoid using something that is easy to guess- Your surname, name, or any other word in the dictionary are not a good idea. If you have to use a word in the dictionary the substititue letters with numbers- For example use a zero instead of an ‘o’, a one instead of an ‘i’ or a three instead of an e. The number looks similar to the letter so it’s easy to remember and will work in your favour.
One last note on passwords: It’s worth being organised with them. If you are busy on the Internet you may sign up to a number of sites in the period of a month. Every time you do make a note of your login and password in a notebook . Resist the temptation to save the details on your copmuter unless you know how to encrypt file or you will be up shit creek without a paddle if somebody gets hold of it. You will need to record the website, username and password for each site you set up an account on and for gods sake don’t lose it! The benefit of this that if somebody manages to guess your password on any site (unlikely if you follow my guidelines above) you will have a list to refer to that confirm all the other sites that use the same password and change them, making it much easier to prevent the damage from spreading. Look after this password book like you would your passport.
Emails:
Sender fraud: The best way for me to start this section is to say it’s shockingly easy to send an email and make it look like its from a freind of yours. Don’t assume an email from somebody you know is actually from them. Based on this be very cautious about opening any attachment even if it is from a friend. Viruses can be sent in email attachments and this is the most common way of getting one. If your anti-virus software is capable of scanning emails then the chances are it will detect it, but if you are in doubt don’t open the attachment. If you read the email but leave the attachment alone it won’t infect your computer.
Email attachments: I covered this in the last paragraph but it’s worth expanding on the information. A lot of files can carry a ‘Trojan’ virus. A simple explanation is a file that looks perfectly benign such as a word document, a spreadsheet or even a website link but contains a program that will make you wonder what was wrong with posting letters instead. If you are not expecting an attachment from a friend then don’t trust it. Even if you are expecting something it could still be infected with a virus without your friend being aware. The only way to protect yourself from this is to make sure your Anti-Virus software checks emails as you recieve them.
Phishing: I will go into more details of this in another article, but this is the term given to any email ‘fishing’ for an inexperienced or trusting indvidual with the motive of getting them to part with their hard earned money. The simple rule on the Internet is not to trust anything that sounds too good to be true. If it’s a Nigerian company owner who wants to pay you for receiving millions of pounds in your bank account the only thing they are after is your bank details and if you trust them enough some money to initiate the transaction. Needless to say you will fill foul of this. It’s worth realising what Phishers are looking for. These days it’s personal information. Don’t break the personal information rules I explained earlier. There is only one person that needs to know your bank account, sort code and pin number: YOU!
Websites
This subject is a bit tricky. There are good websites and there are bad ones. If you trust none of them then you may as well give up with the Internet. You should be pretty confident that a recognised company has a safe website such as Sainsburys, Tescos, Waitrose, Paypal, Barclays etc, etc, but when you are on a site that does not have a high street presence then you need to be aware of the dangers. The main dangers are phishing and viruses. As discussed in the previous section phishing is an attempt to steal enough of your personal information to use your identity to make a purchase or transaction in your name. Some websites set themselves up to look like a legitimate one, for example to look like your bank. In this case when you enter your online banking details on the fake website it will record them allowing somebody to use them to log into your bank account and empty it. Other websites will ask you to install a program to allow you to access part of the site or play a movie. Some of these programs will be viruses so if you are in any doubt then close the window asking you to install this program and close your Internet window.
Purchasing online
There are dishonest traders on the Internet. If you make purchases on the Internet then you may fall foul of this. First you need to understand what the cons are. The dishonest website will have one or more of these objectives:
Steal your credit/debit card details- Instead of supplying goods they use the credit card information you typed in to make fraudulent purchases. The best way you can protect yourself is to make sure the credit card you use is protected against Internet Fraud. I’d even suggest having a credit card you use for Internet transactions and nothing else. Print all your Internet transactions and keep them in a file. If you start getting fraudulent transactions on your credit card and you’ve followed my advice you can provide the credit card company printed documentation of all transactions and more importantly if that credit card has only been used on the Internet then one of those transactions is very likely to be responsible for stealing your card details. I would advise you never use your current account debit card on the Internet. The chaos caused by a fraudster emptying you current account is just not worth the risk. Best of all set up a paypal account. PayPal is a global e-commerce business allowing payments and money transfers to be made through the Internet. Using Paypal prevents you having to give your credit card details to somebody you don’t trust and they will act as a middle-man in any transaction. If you don’t get the goods you purchased then Paypal will own the debt and repay your money.
Gather other personal information/Identity theft- When you make the purchase they will ask for a uneccesary personal information such as your date of birth. If they are asking for uneccesary information to make the purchase you should’nt trust them. Refer to the section about personal security above.
Have no intention of supplying the goods- You buy the goods, they take the money and run. Some Credit cards will cover you for this and so will Paypal. If they do this they will probably try to use your card details fraudulently. Inform your credit card immediately if this happens, and avoid purchasing anything from an untrusted seller that are suggesting delivery times of over two weeks. The longer you have to wait before reporting the fraud the more explaining you will have to do. Another point to consider is that it is common trick for frausters is give a long delivery time allowing them to remain in operation for longer before they are discovered and shut down.