Scammers, Hackers, Identity Thieves, OH MY!| Callagy Law

Tips to Keep You Safe as You Travel the World Wide Web.

ALWAYS KEEP YOUR COMPUTER FREE OF VIRUSES AND OTHER MALWARE OR SCAMWARE- It goes without saying that you should always have an active antivirus protection. Scammers, Hackers and Identity Thieves not only want to destroy your computer, they also want to spy and steal from you. They want to know where you shop and what you are buying. They want to pitch you products and they want to steal your financial information. In addition to a good antivirus, make sure you have a good spyware and adware program running, Many of these are free and everyone should run them.

DON’T LEAVE YOUR TRACKS BEHIND- Every major browser has a private browsing mode you can use to outsmart some scammers, Hackers and Identity Thieves. In most browsers, Control + Shift + P will bring up a private browsing window. (In Chrome browsers, Control + Shift + N brings up the "incognito" window.) Using this will help protect you from Scammers, Identity Thieves and others who benefit from tracking where you are going and where you have been. Also, invest in a program that will keep unwanted cookies off your computer.  Finally, the best way to keep your tracks totally invisible is to use programs that use a web proxy or a virtual private network which will let you surf the web anonymously and will prohibit anyone from linking the Web sites you are visiting to you.

 SNOOPING, EVEN THE GOVERNMENT IS DOING IT!-  We have all read about the government snooping on our conversations and emails, but they are not the only ones!  Have you ever noticed the ads on your computer often strangely match exactly what you were just recently discussing in an email to your friend?  Companies such as Gmail use technology to scan your email just for this purpose.  How can you avoid this? Well, there are programs that will keep your emails private and are worth it!

FINALLY, BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU POST: We are all proud of our beautiful families but as we brag about our children and their accomplishments on Facebook, we are often giving away a lot of information we may not otherwise want to reveal. Do you really want strangers to know the ages of your children and what school they attend. Well, you are telegraphing that every time you post a picture of your children singing at the holiday concert at their elementary school. How about those pictures from Disney World you are posting from every ride your family is on? You might as well just put up a sign that says “hey, we are not home!” Even business sites can be dangerous- post your resume on a job site and you have just given away your name, address and an approximation of your income! (never thought of it that way, right?)  At a minimum, make sure you use set the highest level of privacy settings on Facebook and other social media sites, blur out all identifying information other than perhaps a non-identifying email address on job sites and ALWAYS be mindful of what you are really telling strangers with everything you post.

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