Identity Theft Check

The popularity of sites such as Facebook and Twitter are at an all time high, and millions of users log on every day to catch up with friends and let the world know what they are up to.

However, as with most popular things, there is always somebody who wants to come along and spoil all of your fun, and social networking sites are no different.

When you sign up to these sites, you’re often asked to fill in lengthy forms, full of your personal information. Whilst the owners of these sites do their utmost to protect you, you also need to protect yourself.

You should make sure that you never have your full birthday showing, and also never log in to any applications which ask you for personal information- as you never know who it is going to.

Be a little more aware of the information that you display on these sites and you don’t have to let your fun get spoilt!

Recently, after a short while, I logged back into my Myspace account, only to be told that I had been ‘phished’ and that I needed to change my password.

I’d never even heard of phishing before, so was a bit alarmed when I was told I’d been victim to it. Basically, phishing is when fraudsters get you to put your login details into a page that looks like the site, but it is actually a fake page which allows them to capture your login details and use them to do all sorts of fraudulent things.

Thankfully, I don’t have any financial information stored on Myspace, although my date of birth and address were on there, which left me wide open to identity theft. I’ll be keeping my beady eye on login pages from now on, that’s for sure…

Most of us have shopped online at some point in our lives, and it is becoming more and more popular by the day. However, with the popularity of online shopping at an all time high, the amount of opportunists who are ready and waiting to steal your credit card details and identity is also on the rise.

I know of at least one person who has had this happen to them, and a large chunk was spent on her credit card. This happened a few months ago now, and she still hasn’t received the money back, and the culprits haven’t been prosecuted.

So, when shopping online, make sure that the site has the ‘padlock’ icon, or similar in the corner, and ensure that you log in using the correct homepage- as phishing is also on the rise.

With Wireless networks being increasingly popular, it is important you are aware of potential security risks whilst using your computer at airports, coffee shops etc.

The security on wireless connections ranges from open, WEP, WPA and WPA2.

Open basically means public with no encryption / security to speak of. This means that any data sent from your computer can be read by anyone inbetween your laptop and the airports / coffee shops wireless box.

Intercepting this data is very simple to do making stealing usernames and passwords incredibly easy.

This is the main reason online banks require you to enter your password partially so that its a lot harder to use once stolen.

If you need to use a public network I advise not typing sensitive information and staying off banks / paypal accounts just incase.

To most regular internet users including gamers, bloggers, photographers staying safe online comes easily. For those of you that haven’t spent their life on the internet I can offer some words of advice to keep you from any mishaps.

1. Always keep Anti Virus software and Anti Spyware software updated - I tend to use brands of software that win well known virus competitions / awards.
2. Make sure the above software is set up correctly to actively monitor your computer in real time and to make sure it’s scanning all incoming emails.
3. COMMON SENSE - I’m pretty sure that link you read saying naked Avril Lavigne pictures is going to be dodgy / fake / malicious.

If you stick to the above 3 links then you should be pretty safe.

I’ve come accross a lot of dodgy emails and a lot of dodgy websites in my time, working in this industry. One can usually spot a dodgy email or website a mile off, but do you think you could spot a sophisticated website?

Looks real? Well it’s not, infact if you click on any of those news links, it is going to try and download a few tricks to comprimise your computer.

Things to look out for

The websites url - This fake website will not have the correct URL / Domain name. It will have a URL as close as possible to the real thing in the hope that you won’t study it long enough to browse away from the website.

Spelling Mistakes - Sometimes even sophisticated hackers typo their work.

Too good to be true - Or even too bad to be real.

In summary, common sense prevails and anything else should be caught by any decent virus scanner.

Phishing is the process of trying to steal your identity via fishing your username and passwords usually from a medium like Email.

The most common forms of phising come from emails like “HSBC requires you to reset your password as a safety check, please enter your Username and password here”

The scammer will then have your username and password to your bank and will mostly likely try and part with as much of your money as possible.

Most legitamate emails will normally state that the company will never ask for your password. This is usually 100% true as operators working at banks can look up your account without having to supply your password.

Summary: Don’t give out passwords to anyone and always keep your virus scanner upto date.

Online gaming has been around for quite a while now and is fairly safe to use, but what about the more risky online gambling sites? These types of sites are a large target for online identity thieves using fraudulent emails to gain login details to clean out won bets and steal credit card information.
So what can be done to stop the online identity thieves from stealing your winnings or credit card information? Well as a user not much, but there are various online services that are dedicated to combating fraud such as Proc-Cyber. These services aim to play an active role in monitoring every transaction through the site to ensure there is no foul play and keeping your personal details and winnings where they should be, with you!

Internet auction sites have become one of the biggest mediums on the internet; one of the biggest at the moment is the auction site E-Bay and has become quite reputable and well known. But due to its popularity it attracts allot of unwanted attention from identity theft and scammers. Most of these scams are luckily few and far between these days due to E-Bays online security measures through pay pal, but there are still cretin cases of where falsely posted items appear on the site. Mainly these scams are preformed on larger more expensive items such as cars as these are more beneficial to the thief and once the auction has been won and you have sent the money the items never arrive, this is more prevalent on items shipped from over seas. The best way to avoid scams of this nature is if you wish to buy an item such as a car from an auction site then it would be best to buy locally and inspect the vehicle in question or send a third party inspector to take a look at the cars history and serviceability to be sure you are getting the item described in the auction listing.

There is thousands of honest ecommerce website around on the internet, all trying to sell us products and services of all kinds. But with all these honest sites there are quite a few dishonest sites too. So how can you tell between the honest and dishonest sites?
Security: always check the URL of the page to see if its https secured before entering in any credit card information, this can also be checked by looking for the “padlock” image in the bottom information bar of the browser.
E-mails: even though this is not a strict rule, never enter your credit card information into a site that you got to from an e-mail link that you haven’t signed up to. This is not always the case as a site may have sent you an affiliate link that is perfectly legitimate.
Cloned sites: these are a little more difficult to distinguish from, as the sites usually are an exact copy of a legitimate site just for the sole purpose of steeling your credit card and banking information. Although in most cases i have come across there are a few slight differences that you can look at to tell them apart. The URL is one of the most common, in most cases this will differ from the actual URL of the original site. Another way to tell is poor design work, this is where the site has been cloned from the original and then edited without really knowing what they were doing as the end result is a poor copy with things missing or images stretched out of shape.
Also remember when entering in card information into a site, the site in question should never ask you to provide banking passwords, memorable words, pass codes or pin numbers ECT so never give them out. Install antivirus and anti-spyware software to prevent sites installing backdoor key-loggers, and Trojans. And always remember if the site doesn’t look legitimate then don’t buy or provide personal information to it.