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Page 3 of 4 Reducing Your Risk 
Apart from changing your mindset, there are some practical steps you can take to minimize your risks on line. These are just some handy tips you can use to better protect yourself, even though these may seem obvious to some of you.HANDLING YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION Never give out your personal info in any situation whatsoever that you did not initiate yourself. It doesn't matter that the source may be one you trust. If it's a conversation or transaction you didn't initiate yourself, be wary and give out no information. This is how phishing scams work, and they're fairly easy to avoid with this one simple tip. USE MULTIPLE EMAIL ACCOUNTS Never, ever, ever use your personal or business email account to do anything but have personal or business correspondence with people. If you want to sign up for accounts, free offers, whatever the case may be, use some disposable email/web mail account you don't care about. This won't eliminate Spam, but it can go a long way towards reducing it. Sadly Spam has made email as a communications medium more and more useless as time goes by. And don't rely on web mail as a primary email account. Your ISP often provides you with several traditional POP or SMTP accounts. Use them. BE SKEPTICAL OF FILES FROM UNTRUSTWORTHY SOURCES The trick here seemingly is to figure out what is an untrustworthy source, but it's not really. If you get a weird file attachment in email just don't open it. If it's from a friend, reply to them and ask them what it is? If they're really a friend, they'll know and tell you. If you're being a cheapskate and downloading software from a p2p service instead of paying for it, accept the fact that you've accepted A RISK by doing so, and the only person you have to blame if something goes wrong is yourself. People pray on the gullible, so just don't be gullible. Very little in this life comes for free. If it's a transaction YOU INITIATED, then YOU ARE TACITLY ACCEPTING THE RISKS. Realizing this one simple fact might make you be a little more cautious. CHANGE WEB BROWSERS Much in the way of risk to your on line experience can be mitigated by changing web browsers. Internet Explorer is by far the most widely used browser, and as a browser it's a decent one. But, because it's the most widely used, it's also the most widely targeted by the likes of spyware, urlware, browser hijacks, toolbars, etc... For the most part the term "spyware" is a misnomer. Most of what is classified as "spyware" is about as malicious as you going to the grocery store and using a "Bonus Card" to get advertised specials. It's often a similar exchange of information. Just as you get a deal on your groceries by sharing your shopping habits with a retailer, you can get free web services and even free software, by sharing your browsing habits. Overwhelmingly the information exchanged is innocuous and trivial. The real threat is to system stability. Internet Explorer is by and large surgically joined at the hip with Windows itself. The more "addons" Internet Explorer takes under it's belt, the more bloated it becomes, and this can not only affect Internet Explorer stability, it can have an adverse affect on general Windows stability. It's this one fact that makes using an alternative browser wise, and there are quite a few good alternatives available such as Firefox, Opera, and Avant Browser (though it uses IE's rendering engine, it's still generally regarded as being far safer). The best way to avoid problems is to avoid them, and this can go a long way towards separating your browsing from your general Windows use. UNHIDE FILE EXTENSIONS One of the ways Windows XP tries to "look different" from it's predecessors, is by hiding file extensions. In thumbnail view in your photo album you, for instance, you might see a thumbnail image named "girlfriend" or whatever. The actual filename would probably be "girlfriend.jpg" Now in this instance, hiding the file extension isn't either good or bad. Now, imagine you receieve an email attachment from a supposed friend, called "coolpicture.gif". You see the GIF extension and naturally assume it's a GIF image. With file extensions hidden, it could possibly be "coolpicture.gif.exe", you just cant see the .exe extension. As long as Windows operating systems rely on file extensions to handle files, you're best off seeing them and disabling this Windows XP feature. It's really simple to re-enable file extensions too. Just go to any Explorer window, such as My Computer, select TOOLS, then OPTIONS, in the menu. In the Folder Options Control Panel that pops up, go to the VIEW tab, uncheck the box for HIDE KNOWN FILE EXTENSIONS, and click APPLY. It's a simple thing to do that might just save yourself some grief one day. BEHAVE YOURSELF This sounds too obvious, but so many people just don't get this! If you wouldn't dare act like a total j*ck*ss to people you don't know in a bar or a restaurant, don't do it online either. If you wouldn't dare strip naked on Main Street and give the town a show, don't do it over a web cam in a chat room. People tend to assume that because they are anonymously sitting behind a screen that they can get away with all sorts of socially unacceptable behavior. The reality is sooner or later such naivety always comes back to haunt you. If you wouldn't do it in front of your wife, girlfriend, cousin, kids, friends, DONT DO IT ONLINE. You can still have fun and find plenty of opportunities to educate, enjoy or entertain yourself on line, just realize that you aren't as anonymous as you seem. You are what you do. |
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