As much as we use the internet daily, we must admit that it has its positive sides and negative ones and that danger lurks there too. Privacy in the web has been threatened by “Hackers” and idlers who follow all links we may visit and implicate on us to solicit funds or tap personal information which they will use against us. Worse still is the tracking down of people into their residencies and dealings and side-track business money into their own credit cards.

Seeing such dangers and others we can expose ourselves to, internet users need to beware not to expose sensitive data or personal information that should be concealed from strangers. They need to remember that in the internet everybody is a stranger. Web security and privacy is of great concern to all, I shall look into a few ways keeping ourselves safe as we go about in the websites.

There are many security tools that we can take advantage of. These include:

  • 1.       Never expose personal information in the websites-many websites require visitors to sign up and be logging in each time they visit the site.  Other sites request visitors to fill forms that inquire of personal information. The step to take is NOT TO FILL any of those forms as we have no authority over the information we feed.
  • 2.       Clear search history: this is a very important step in our security. The sites we visit retain memory of the visitors in the short term. These temporary files can be accessed by the idlers and hackers. They act as a muddy track would; someone following us would follow and catch up with us. If we remove the cache, the “remembrance“of us is lost.
  • 3.       When doing research or studies in a webpage, we do well to avoid registrations. If we place a thumbprint on every gate we pass, well, what may be we find at the end? We cannot tell the intention of these idlers so it’s better to avoid the danger zone just as we would keep off deep sea knowing that hungry sharks are out hunting.
  • 4.       It is good to use an anti spyware software on our computer as it keeps off the “uninvited guest” that may come to spy on our activity or even some details in the disks of the machines we are working on.
  • 5.       Most websites have a privacy policy that we would do well to read, use it to our advantage by blocking exposure of personal details. The social networking sites allow the members to customize security settings, and authorize the people allowed to view the page and blocks to all the others.
  • 6.       E-mail is to be protected. We register to most sites using e-mail. We end up getting mail we never subscribe to and much junk mail. We all need to have a separate personal e-mail account from the one we use at work. Another idea is to encrypt e-mail so that its contents are not seen by all people.

Those are just simple measures that we can take to ensure we are safe. Not to be forgotten is the fact that we should NEVER feed credit card or debit card information in the web. We could so easily be swindled of our money unknowingly. If we keep this in mind, we shall keep off the lurking dangers of the internet.