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securityZone - protect your identity and data

Overview

Online security is a major concern for most computer users when faced with the multitude of potential cyber crimes among which theft of key personal data - usernames, passwords and bank account details - is an increasingly significant.

Howto

Take these simple steps you can take to make your personal identity and data more secure:

First, be careful both browsing the web and in dealing with e-mail - both websites and e-mails can be sources of malicious code. If an e-mail asks you to log in to a secure site (your bank or PayPal for example), and even if you think that it may be genuine, don't use any link in the e-mail but access the site directly using your browser. For more information, look at the Wikipedia article on phishing. You can subscribe to the Sophos newsletter for regular updates on the latest viruses, trojans, hoaxes and other online scams.

Secondly, choose and use passwords that aren't obvious or easy to deduce and which have apparently random characters - hard to do if you want them to be memorable, but take a look at the Good and Bad Passwords How-To.

Thirdly, log-out of websites when you've finished using them and regularly clear temporary files stored by your browser when accessing the web (here's how to for Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera and Safari).

Fourthly, install and run an anti-malware program which, as well as detecting and eliminating any unwanted programs loaded while browsing (not caught by your firewall), will clear cookies that try to pass information about your browsing history back to the website that placed them. However, some desirable features that make browsing better can be implemented using cookies, such as personalization.

Fifthly, manage the privacy and security settings on your social networking profiles so that you only show personal information with the people you want to share with (see this BBC report on the hacker threat to social networking sites). Use SortedPC's step-by-step instructions for the major social networking sites: