Security and Crime on the Internet

What common threats can you expect?

In general there are three kinds of threats on the internet:

Scams and Frauds
Viruses, Trojans and Worms
Adware and Spyware

Scams and Frauds

Usually you will get them in your email. Some examples are emails from people in other countries who want to transfer money and they promise you that you will get some part of the money. The only thing you have to do is give them your bank data.

Another "popular" version of fraud is an email that looks like from your bank. The email contains a link to update your personal information. If you follow the link you will enter a fake website that looks like the website of your bank. Most of the time even the links in the navigation will point to the right menu options on the real site of your bank.

In general do not give out any personal information on the internet unless you are in a shop and have to give your details for shipping or payment. Do not look or follow links that are in emails send to you from someone you do not know. Your bank for example would never write you an email and request you to update your account information. If you somehow followed a link and you are on such a scam site look in the address bar of your browser. The address will be most likely a number or an address you do not know. Avoid going on these websites even if you just want to take a look at them because usually they also have viruses on them.

Viruses, Trojans and Worms

You can get them while surfing on the internet or attached to an email. If you exchange data with another computer you can also get infected if the other computer has a virus. Most viruses will not completely erase your harddrive and all your data. Nonetheless it is essential to be protected. Hacker utilise viruses or trojans to gain access to your computer to steal data, invade your privacy or use your computer for their purposes. Many viruses also send themself from your computer to other computers or send personal data from your computer to another computer therefore it is important to have a firewall installed.

A firewall is a program that you use to allow certain programs on your computer to access the internet. Your browser for example needs to be one of the programs which may access the internet. A firewall prevents viruses to send data and keeps hacker out of your system.

Adware and Spyware

Adware and Spyware usually comes together with other programs that seem to be harmless. These programs are not as dangerous as viruses but also collect data of your computer and your behaviour and send it "home" which is in most cases a company that will use this information to spam you with advertising emails or sell this information.

Complete data of a human starting with name, address, occupation to their yearly income is valued around 70$.

Suggested Security Software

It makes sense to invest in a reliable security software. It is a one time investment and makes sense because the amount of viruses will increase in the future and if you ever went through the struggle to recover an infected computer you will know that this is something you really want to avoid in the future. Furthermore established anti virus companies offer excellent free updates once you bought the software. A very good offer is the complete Internet Security Suite from McAfee that has all necessary tools to stop viruses, trojans, worms, adware and spyware. If such a complete security suite is kept up to date one has done as much as possible and can stop worrying about these kind of threats. Another good security suite is available from Zonelabs.

Crime on the Internet

Besides the different kinds of fraud and scams on the internet the subject child pornography comes to everyones mind when they think about internet related crime. Pornography on the internet is not child pornography and in fact 99.9% of all adult websites on the internet clearly oppose any form of child pornography. Child pornography is still on the internet but pictures and videos are exchanged in private chatrooms and closed forums. Therefore if someone does not activily search for this kind of material it is very very unlikely to see it. If you have kids that use the computer it still might make sense to install a web filter such as cyber patrol that protects your kids from viewing pornographic or violent content.