In today’s world, we are all in some way connected to or involved with the internet. We all use different services that we feel either enrich our lives or make them more enjoyable every day, from email to FaceBook, MySpace, and e-commerce. We all take a sort of false comfort in the basic anonymity of the internet; however, when we think about it, that could end up being the single biggest risk to our own safety today. When we typically think of crimes committed against us, we could probably name several: mugging, theft, scams, murder, and rape. For these, things we all take as many necessary steps as we can to help lower the chances of them happening to us because they are on the forefront of our minds. However, most of us don’t take the …show more content…
The sheer availability of information and the ease of access to such information to even the most novice computer user is helping fuel the growth of this type of cybercrime. There are some ways to protect ourselves and our families. First we need to understand that we are the first line of defense against any type of cybercrime and need to become more proactive in helping ourselves. While there are laws in place that are being constantly revised to protect our information; for the most part they only help after the fact. The average user doesn’t have proper software setup on their home PC’s to protect their information, and even when they do they don’t keep it up-to-date. There are several very good services available for either free or a very reasonable cost such as antivirus software, adware/spyware protection, and firewall software that will help keep our information from being obtained directly from our very own computer. Once we have these items in place, it becomes as just important to configure them properly and keep them up-to-date so these programs can catch all the newest ways the criminals use to try and get around them. Another way to protect our information is to be diligent in researching who we are doing business with, and what their practices are in regards to protecting our information once they have it. In recent years, there have been several instances of high profile security breaches from some .
