Posted 21 Sep 2011
Fraud = Bad. Privacy is about protecting information and fraud is about misusing information. Protecting your privacy means preventing fraud. Check out the top 10 ways that you might be defrauded and the best privacy guard to protect yourself.
An oldie but a goodie, people still dig through the trash looking for financial information. Once you have set your trash on the curb, it is actually legal for anyone to rifle through it. To protect your privacy, shred any documents that you throw out.
There are lots of ways that people use email to scam you out of information or money. Spammers could send you links to nefarious websites disguised as legitimate links, they can spoof an email from a friend with attachments infected with viruses, or they could just convince you they are a Namibian prince.
Preventing these kinds of attacks includes a bit of common sense and some software. The common sense part includes not opening emails from suspicious sources, not opening attachments that you aren't expecting, even if it comes from friends, and not clicking on links in the body of the email, even if it comes from friends.
The software you need is simple anti virus software (make sure to keep it updated), and make sure your firewall is on.
This kind of attack occurs when someone intercepts your internet traffic and watches what you do online. It usually happens when someone picks up your unsecured wireless router signal, or picking up your traffic when you log in through a public wifi spot like at a coffee shop.
Protect your home or office router with a strong password. If you are surfing the internet from a public place, log into a secure VPN before you start browsing.
Fraudsters will sometimes try to imitate legitimate websites, like your bank website or email, to get you to enter personal information. They might try to get your email address, password, bank account info, credit card, or a whole host of other data.
To protect against this kind of fraud make sure that the URL is the one you expect to see. Many times fraudsters will try to capitalize on a slight misspelling in the URL. The spoofed websites will also often have spelling or grammar mistakes, or it will simply be slightly different from the website you normally visit. Double check these things before entering any personal information.
Many websites can track your surfing activity after you have left their site, sometimes for months after you have visited. This lets them collect a lot of data about you.
To prevent this kind of tracking, delete cookies from your browser. You can also use private browsing modes or secure browsers, like Iron Browser.
Privacy is freedom. Some people abuse freedom and some people abuse privacy. That does not mean that honest people will not go to great lengths to get both. Using the right internet privacy guard, combined with some quick thinking, to prevent most kinds of fraud. For other tips on preventing information fraud, check out the book How To Vanish or subscribe to the list.
