Security on the Web
by Jonathan Jordan
The key to Your Personal Security on the web has two parts:
1) Limiting and Controlling access to your personal information, and
2) The amount of trust and alertness you have while browsing the web and interacting with other people.
The Security of your Personal Information has always been a concern, but as the web has grown, so has access to your Personal Information. As has always been, some of that access you have control over, while other information is controlled by third parties. The truth is, your personal information has always been accessible from third-parties such as: phonebooks, government agencies, public records, even medical institutions. So why do people think your information is now less secure being on the web then it was before?
The only thing that the web changed, is the ease of access to that information. Before you would have to live in the city or county to look somebody up in the local phonebook. Or you would have to go down to the City or County Records to get a background check. Now you can do all those things online, from anywhere in the world.
People are often shocked by the amount of information available about them on the web. Doing a Google Search often turns up some interesting information: forums they are involved in, their Twitter, MySpace, and Facebook profiles, their place of business, old high school or college newspaper articles. But Google is not the only source of personal information, doing a phonebook lookup on DexOnline, or an address search on Zillow for property values, or a search on one of the many background-check websites, like Intelius, all provide a wealth of information. Doing any one of those makes it is easy to cross-reference this information to get even more. For people who own a website or have a domain name, doing a Whois search can also provide an email and mailing address as well as a phone number.
So how do you possibly protect yourself when all this information is already out there?
To Limit and Control the Amount of Information Available
- You can often have yourself removed from online phonebooks like DexOnline
- Adjust your privacy settings on Facebook, Myspace, etc. Facebook is really nice because you can control what your friends and networks see.
- Always use a secure password, and ideally you should use a different password on every site you use.
- Register your domains with Private Registration or use a PO Box or business address instead of your home address.
Common Things to Be Aware of While Browsing the Web
- When buying online or submitting other sensitive information, always make sure that the site uses a Security Certificate. This is often symbolized by a little lock icon in your browser (
 ). Your browser may alert you when a Security Certificate is not trusted or not installed properly, in those cases, only proceed if you are absolutely sure you are on the right site, be careful of sites that use similar looking domain names.
- Don't believe any emails or ads that say you've won the lottery, inherited money, or that they can put you on the first page of the seach engines. Other scams include "free website listings", "Earn Money on Google" and "Domain Registry of America", these often trick you into paying to renew a service that you never subscribed to.
- Sites that popup an alert that says you may have a virus and offer a free virus scan or scams. They will try to trick you into downloading a virus or other software to capture your personal information. These sites will often try to make it look like your computer desktop or a Windows alert box. Often clicking on those windows will begin a file download. You should close these sites as soon as possible.
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