There are many people concerned about their online privacy, especially the controversy that arose in the US after the Snowden case, a former CIA employee, who released the news about the surveillance and control of any communication on the internet by US governments and UK. But going beyond this so sensational and disturbing fact, privacy is a bit the price to pay to use the internet for free.
Giants like Facebook, Google and even simpler and smaller sites are able to offer free services thanks to advertising and the collection of personal data that are used to publish targeted and personalized ads to users.
There is nothing outrageous about this, the important thing is that the information concerning us is not used for other purposes and that it does not go beyond the information consensually given to these sites.
Unfortunately this is often not the case and unscrupulous companies can, through deception or the use of malware, penetrate more deeply into users' computers and spy on everything they do, even our financial data as well as private and sensitive information.
The good news is that information thieves are successful only if they manage to catch us unprepared, the bad news instead that they are always ready to take advantage of our mistakes.
Below we see the most common technical errors that can endanger our privacy on the internet by opening vulnerabilities on our computer or smartphone.
Error 1: Do not update the antivirus and antimalware
Installing an antivirus on your computer is not enough, you must also make sure that it is up to date.
In Windows 8 the antivirus is already integrated and is automatically updated with the Windows Updates.
Error 2: do not use a firewall
The firewall is the program that protects your computer from unauthorized incoming internet connections.
In practice, it prevents the computer from being accessed and controlled from the outside by a hacker capable of exploiting malware or a program flaw.
The firewall as a protective barrier that keeps intruders out.
The firewall is integrated into Windows 7 and 8 where it would not be necessary to install external programs if one is careful.
Another article lists the best free firewalls for PC, to be installed on Windows if you don't trust yourself (and if you still use Windows XP).
The firewall is superfluous only if you connect to the internet via a router, which has integrated filter and protection functions.
In this case, however, the dangers can come from within the network, from other computers connected to that router.
Error 3: bad use of Email, Facebook and other communication tools
Email is still one of the most used ways to communicate on the Internet just as Facebook has become in recent years.
Email and Facebook are the channel most used by hackers to spread malware and defraud users.
The mistake here lies in being so naive as to fall into a phishing scam, made from a warning message that sounds very important (security problem detected or competition win), which if it is opened it can lead to trouble.
If you receive emails or strange messages, with very private requests or too sensational news, better be wary and trash immediately.
To deepen the topic you can read the guides on:
- How Facebook is used to infect computers
- How to recognize Email with viruses; 3 ways to infect a computer via email
Error 4: Using universal passwords and always the same
This is perhaps the worst mistake you can make to endanger your online privacy and security.
Use
We have recently seen how passwords are stolen and how easy it can be if you use passwords made of easy words or present on the vocabulary or if you always use the same password for a long time without ever changing it.
The solution, therefore, is to use different passwords for different accounts and to use passwords made of letters and numbers that do not make up meaningful words and which cannot be traced (such as dates of birth).
Mistake 5: Revealing personal information
As mentioned in the introduction, privacy is a price to pay to use sites such as Facebook or Google, but it does not mean that we must share any private data with them and with other subscribers.
It is therefore necessary to take care of the privacy settings of each site that you use and exchange messages on and it is very important not to miss out on credit card information, PINs and other financial data, also avoiding sharing them via private messages which, passing on internet, they can always be prey to some malicious hacker.
READ ALSO: Protect privacy on the internet and see what the web knows about us
