Fwd: ҉ Kerala Friends ҉ Effects of Internet on Our Lives and Risks
Rangachari, Narayanan
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If you are not careful while using Internet, you are exposing yourself to many risks, some of them will have a long long impact. Read this,
1. Your personal information, and information about day to day happenings are shared on social sites like Facebook, Twitter etc. can be accessed and used by criminal gangs to your disadvantage. Your weekend plans, annual outings or general absence from home for a few days shared with friends can be an easy opportunity for a house break.
2. The matrimonial sites are very dangerous particularly for school/college going girls, working women as well as those who are divorced and looking for a partner. These people become easy targets of the crooks like Mr Tushar Waghmare who married 14 times in just two & half years. Always verify and cross verify through various sources before committing a proposal on such sites.
3. Avoid downloading any software [freeware] from sites not known to you or looks/sounds similar to the reputated sites like Microsoft [Macrosoft] etc. The downloaded software from unsolicited sites may contain a Trojon virus which will sit on your harddisk and pass on your personal information and keyboard strokes to its master sitting far away, who will misuse it against you without your knowledge.
4. Do not open email in your Inbox which belong to unknown sender, just DELETE them. Once you open the email, a virus will get downloaded automatically without your knowledge and cause similar harm mentioned in point 3 above.
5. Similarly DELETE emails without opening them received from Phishers. Phishing is very difficult to locate and identify. Example, email from your bank asking you to access the link to provide your bank account, password and other secret information which normally your bank will not ask through an email. The link will take you to a exact replica of your bank's official internet site, hosted on a server that belongs to the criminal, which will be difficult for you to identify it as a "Phishing" site.
6. Emails containing winning a lottery, help to retrieve funds from the bank in some African country, proposals for love/ marriage from a stranger are the different ways used by criminals to trap you in some financial scam, so just DELETE emails from unknown senders.
7. Refuse any offers of making money sitting at home doing nothing. Example you receive an email saying that a company will give you some cash which you need to deposit in your bank account and then issue a check favouring that company minus your commission. This technique is known as "Mules" and normally used by money laundering gangs.
8. In social sites do not accept invitations from the unknown people, because once you accept the invitation your personal information is automatically available to strangers and it can be misused against you.
9. Do not share your telephone numbers, home address, bank accoun numbers, credit card numbers with your relatives/friends over the Internet [emails, social sites]. While shopping on Internet using your credit cards, satisfy yourself for security features the seller has on its shopping site before you provide your credit card numbers.
10. Last but not the least, if your home PC is not virus protected or not protected by personal firewall, as soon as you hooked on to the Internet you are available for cyber attacks by the waiting criminals and you increase your risks by many folds. So install anti-virus software [McAfee], activate personal firewall protection and use Internet safely.
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