You probably don’t need to subscribe to this newsletter to know that we live in a world that is much less safe than it was 40, 30, or even 20 years ago.  Financial predators, sexual predators, or just plain predators can put you and your loved ones in a great deal of danger.  The Internet has been a good thing in many ways for people in allowing them to access information, obtain services, and meet other people.  But it has also given these predators new and more insidious ways to put people in danger.  In this week’s Info Bytes article, we’ll discuss some threats to you that come via the Internet and what you can do to prevent them from putting you or your loved ones in danger.

You may not be surprised to discover that all of these threats center on the idea of revealing personal information online.  The Internet can be a relatively anonymous world, since in most cases you can’t see the face of the person on the computer on the other end—and in such a place of anonymity, predators can take any personal information they can get about a person and use it for financial gain or worse at that person’s expense.  The recent case of the Social Security numbers of more than 26 million veterans being stolen was not on the Internet per se (the information was on a computer hard drive that was stolen), but it does point up the danger of leaving personal information exposed in any computing environment—including online.

Fortunately, in your average Internet experience there are several tools you can use to prevent your personal information from falling into the wrong hands.  First, you may notice that many financial institution Web pages, online e-mail access sites, or other sites containing personal information will require you to enter a user name and password to access them.  It goes without saying that you should never give out those user names and passwords to anyone you do not know (and quite possibly also anyone you know but do not trust with the information).  If at all possible, do not write those user names and passwords down but try to memorize them.  If you must write them down, store the written copy in a safe and secure place.

When you have finished accessing your information on these sites, you will often be asked to log off the site.  It is always a good idea to log off rather than merely closing your browser’s window; logging off will completely break the connection between your computer and the site where closing the browser may leave the connection active on your computer (with the result that the next person sitting at the computer, opening a browser, and accessing the same site would be able to go right in as if they were you and view your information).  Many times on logging off, you’ll be prompted to close the browser after doing so; you always want to do so, and this site offers a good and concise explanation of why that is true.

There may be times that you will be asked to provide personal information online (online shopping where a credit card is required is a good example).  In most cases, you can judge whether it is safe to provide this by looking at the frame of your browser.  When you are accessing a secure site, your information will be encrypted before it is transferred from your computer to the site server (that means that instead of being sent as straight text and numbers, it’s converted into an unreadable format that can be reconverted once it reaches its destination computer).  The way to tell if you are visiting a secure site is to look for a small icon similar to a yellow padlock on the outer frame of your browser.  Netscape and Internet Explorer will display this padlock toward the lower right hand corner of the browser screen; Mozilla Firefox will display it toward the top in the location bar showing the address of the site (the location bar will also be displayed in a light yellow background color instead of white).  When you see that padlock icon, you know that your information will be encrypted and that you don’t have to worry about its being stolen for harmful purposes as long as you are dealing with a reputable business/organization that’s asking for the information (and it never hurts to check that as well).

Finally, a word about personal information sites such as Myspace.com, Friendster.com, and Tribe.net.  These are sites that allow users to join and have a place to post personal information about themselves—physical descriptions, pictures, general locations, their likes and dislikes, and diary-like entries about themselves.  They can then meet others with similar likes and dislikes and get to know an online community of friends.

Sound relatively harmless?  In a lot of cases, it can be.  But parents be cautioned—recent murder cases in California and New Jersey have been linked to meetings through these personal sites.  In Connecticut, seven girls were sexually assaulted by men that they met through one of these sites.

As always on the Internet, the danger is the relative anonymity.  Someone can easily pose as something they are not—a sexual predator with an electronic picture can pretend to be a young girl “looking for friends” and lure unsuspecting innocent people to some very bad things.  In many cases, they can do so just by the personal information they can find about others on these sites. 

This article posted on a California school district’s Web site has an excellent discussion of Myspace.com and why parents should monitor what their children are doing on it and what information they are posting.  Parents would always be well advised to know what their children are doing on the Internet and who knows about it—knowing and doing something about troubling situations could mean the difference between life and death.

HunTel.net wants all of our customers to enjoy their Internet experiences and be able to use the Internet as a tool for positive things for years to come—and with a little caution and common sense, you can do your part to keep Internet predators away from you and your loved ones.

Thank you for using HunTel.net!