Sunday, June 22, 2008

How to safeguard our personal and financial data?

Recently, the powerful of Internet has been increase day by day. In other words, we live in an increasingly online world. Although it increase in the use of Internet, it's increase the cyber criminal too. Identity theft has become one of the most frightening non-violent crimes of the 21st century and has become all too common So, it is important to safeguard our personal and financial data to access by unauthorized user to take advantage on those information.

The following are some suggestion to safeguard our personal and financial data:

1. Do not give and fill any personal or financial data through online
It is important not to do so because some website might be not a "true" website. It's happen especially intended "person" intend to steal your information such as phising which is common example that makes user get into trap. Phishing is the criminally fraudelent process of attempting to acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and credit card details, by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication. So, the users are advised not to give any information especially personal and financial. Example, any request by the online bank on the detail through internet, the users are recommended to get confirmation by the Bank and is more proper go to the Bank to fill up the detail.


2. Only Make Purchases On Trusted Sites

When deals seem too good to be true, they just may be - you might be paying as a victim of identity theft when you make purchases on websites that aren't secure. There are lots of small online retailers that don't have adequately secure payment systems. The best way to make sure that your information doesn't get intercepted is by simply sticking with trusted, well-known online retailers, or smaller sites that use reputable payment processors like PayPal or Google Checkout. Regardless of which site you use, you should always make sure to look for the padlock icon on the bottom of your browser to verify that the page is safe.

3. Having a proper antivirus and anti spyware and keep on updating
Antivirus and anti spyware shows a very important characteristic to protect your information and computer. It is used to prevent virus to attack the computer and anti spyware takes a preventative approach to spyware, focused on spyware’s main entry point, Web browser. So, the cracker cannot easily break into the system to access personal and financial information of the user. The antivirus and anti spyware's software needed to keep on updating to have more strong prevention on the latest trap on the time basis. Example of these software include AVG Antivirus and Antispyware, Ad-Aware Professional SE, SpywareBlaster,SpyBot - Search & Destroy, Norton AntiVirus, McAfee Anti-Spyware, and etc.

4. Choosing Passwords to Protect Personal and Financial Data
Users and recommeded to choose passwords that would be difficult for someone who knows you to guess. So, if a friend or coworker can not figure out your passwords, someone who does not know you probably will not be able to do so. It is important that never use personal information numbers for passwords. For example, telephone number, birth dates, identity card number, and etc. Beside that, passwords is advised to change occasionally. Athought this is time-consuming, but not as time consuming as recovering from identify theft. At the same time, do not repeat password. It is obvious that the same password should not be used for every file, website, server and system that you log im to, but many people still fall into this practice. If you use the same pasword for many financial and personal records, magine the damage you will incure if someone finds your password for one set of records. Use a different password for each account, website and so on.



The above might be some way to safeguard our personal and financial data. Thanks.

4 comments:

georgia said...

This post is nice to advice internet user to protect their personal financial data.
We have to aware with our financial data because of our data may be access by unauthorized user to take advantage on the information.

jieyii said...

This is very true that we need to be aware of our data been access by unauthorized user because this is not a recent isue that had been arise recently.
We cannot predict when our personal and financial data been used by other unauthorised user but what we can do is to take some safeguard to prevent this problem occur.
This problem happen on me too at second semester in year 2. My credit card number had been used by someone else to book the air ticket in airasia. Luckily, the employee of bank's credit card department had call me for confirmation the transaction. Therefore the transaction just can be cancel.
So, is advise that not too frequent have the online transaction although it is more convinient. However, there is more important to have proper safeguard in order to decrease the risk of the personal and financial data will be used by others.
Thanks for your sharing.

Anonymous said...

All these safeguard for personal and financial data really useful for us as it provides some guideline for us on how we can ensure our personal and financial data is protected.

jieyii said...

Thank you for siok yean comment. There are only some way that can let us to aware of the protection of personal and finance data. However, what can do for solve this problem is the attitude of people need to be change. If not, we only can prevent but the problem still will not be solve.