If you ask a victim of identity theft “How did this happen?”,
most will answer with “The internet”.
Many people are very skeptical about giving out their personal
information over the internet and honestly, who can blame them? I, myself, have never been a victim of
identity theft (knocking on wood as I type this) but I do know a quite a few
people who have. The reasons this
happened to them was because:
1)
They were not accessing websites with a secure
connection
2)
They did not have the proper amount of security
on their home/work computer
It is important to learn a little bit about the internet
technology which safeguards a computer against viruses and threats. A Local Area Network (LAN) is a computer
network that supports users in a small geographical area. This might be a home, school, business,
library or several buildings on a college campus. A Metropolitan Area Network (MAN) is one that
connects a much larger region, such as a borough in New York City. A Wide Area Network (WAN) covers a very wide
geographical area. A WAN could be a
variety of smaller LAN’s that are connected.
Most businesses have a WAN network as they must have the ability to
connect to other computers in the company, whether local or abroad. Last but not least, the wireless networks
which connect you with the rest of the world are called Wireless Personal Area
Networks or (WPAN’s) and Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN’s). These networks allow you to connect to the
internet using radio frequency transmissions in lieu of being connected to an
Ethernet cable.
Having all different types of networking options allows a
user to branch out and do things never before thought possible. You can be sitting in a meeting at work, here
in Buffalo and connect to a group of people who are having a meeting in
China. This is called a web meeting or
virtual conferencing. I have attended
many meetings of this nature and it is very interesting to see technology at
its best.
However, not all internet connections are secure, nor can
they be trusted. Unfortunately, there
are people out there who have figured out how to “hack” someone’s IP address
and get all of their personal information off of their computer. This is 9 times out of 10 used for identity
theft purposes. These “hackers” also
know how to exploit security vulnerabilities in networks and use them to send
out destructive programs knows as “viruses”, “worms” and “Trojan horses”. One way to prevent this from happening is to
install a firewall into your computer.
You can also purchase anti-virus software to stop malicious threats from
accessing your data.
Video was uploaded from YouTube April 21, 2012
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