Computer Security And Surfing
How can I protect myself on the Internet?
In terms of being conscious of security while you're surfing around and you're online, there are a number of things that you want to look for. You certainly want to look for sites that have some kind of security in place. There's a number of different levels of security. Sometimes the lowest form of security is enough, but you can usually see this through a certificate, the site may say it's secure, or you'll notice in your browser on the bottom of the bar, there's usually a little padlock. When that padlock is closed, that means you have a secure connection and information that you're sending is encrypted.
How can I keep my identity private while surfing?
Another way to protect yourself, or certainly create a lot less chaos when you're surfing and using the internet, is to have a couple of different email addresses, maybe one's more of an anonymous address or a throwaway address, that's an irrelevant address, and that's the one you use whenever you have to register for something. There are a lot of sites that you do have to register for to get information, they may not be sites that you come back to, but that's the unspoken deal, that you'll provide them with your personal information. Have a private email address that you only distribute to friends and family so only those people know that address and you can trust anyone that's going to write you from that address. The other thing you can do to protect your personal data is create passwords that people wouldn't associate with you, don't use your birth date as your password, don't use your name spelled backwards as your password. Try to mix it up with a combination of alpha numeric characters, letters, numbers, some capital, some lowercase, to protect your personal data.
How can I tell if a website is secure?
There are a number of ways that you can tell whether a site that you're working with is secure or not. One of the most common ways is a little icon on the bottom of your browser that's a padlock. When that padlock is open, you're not in a secure site. When the padlock is closed, you're now in a secure site where any data being transmitted is encrypted. Encryption is simply a matter of decoding information on one end and encoding it on another end. A couple of other ways are something called an SSL, which is a Secure Socket Layer. It's a special port or a special connection used only for the transmission of secure data, so it's not mixed with any of the other data that might be transmitted in the site, such as descriptions, or product information, or anything like that. Finally, there's another protocol; and you'll see in the web address instead of http:// you might see https://. That's a secure hypertext protocol.
What is "encryption"?
Encryption is a process in which data is encoded so that it can be sent over lines, network lines, the Internet, and it is decoded on the end where it is received. That way, the information, if it's intercepted between the sender and the receiver, actually is meaningless: it's a bunch of jumbled garbage.
What do I do if I get the "you are entering an unsecured site" box?
If you're entering a page and a box comes up or there's any kind of notification that the site is not secure, you have to basically decide what the relative risk level is. Are you going to be providing any sensitive information? If not, there's really probably little harm in going. If the site in insecure and it's asking for personal information, then you might want to double think about entering any information in this site.
Can I ask a website to remove my personal information?
In theory, if you write to a website and ask them to remove all of your personal data they are obligated to do so. Again, that's in theory, I'm not sure it's in practice. Much like the real world, the more legitimate an operation or business is, the more likely they are to comply with these kinds of policies. The more fly-by-night, shady, unknown or small-scale businesses and operations may not remove personal data when asked. In my experience, legitimate businesses do follow these practices. And some of the smaller companies that don't immediately remove personal data it's not always for malicious purposes, sometimes it's difficult, they don't have someone to maintain a website and they don't mean any harm, but nonetheless your information hasn't been removed. Persistence is often key in seeing that your personal information is removed from sites that you do not want it to reside in.
Should I read a website's privacy policy, and what should I look for if I do?
The majority of websites, especially commercial websites, have a privacy policy. While they can be long and cumbersome, it is often worthwhile reading them, if for nothing else, to find out what their policy is on selling their mailing list. What that means is that they either will or will not sell the collection of names, essentially e-mail addresses, that have registered with their site. Whether this is important to you or not is a personal decision, but a lot of the spam that you receive in in your mail box every day comes from companies that have purchased mailing lists from other companies.
What can I do if I think a company violated its own privacy policy?
If you feel that a company has violated its own privacy policy, or at least not adhered to it, I would certainly first contact that company with some kind of demonstrable communication, such as an email or a letter, and give them an opportunity to correct the violation of the privacy policy. If not, they're a business like any other, and you have outlets such as the Better Business Bureau, you might also want to take the violation of the privacy policy up with an ISP that is providing hosting with that site, or other companies that are related with that site.
