Each time you register at a web site</strong> or make a purchase online, your personal information is revealed and stored in a database.
Suddenly everything is at risk – your username, password, name, address, credit card, email address and more. Worse yet, every time you shop online you put yourself at greater risk of losing control of your own identity and personal information. The consequences can be disastrous, the situation is very difficult to resolve, and the fallout can last for years. The dangers are everywhere – and they’re growing daily. Here are just a few of them:
Identity Theft
In just the past 3 years well over 20 million Americans were victims of identity theft. Personal information is acquired by criminals in a variety of ways, including stealing personal records, telephone soliciting, Internet scams and often by raiding merchants’ databases. Online e-commerce sites are highly vulnerable, especially to inside jobs.
Fraud
It happens over the Internet and offline. The criminal mind is ingenious, and the only limit on the frauds that can occur is the creativity of the perpetrators. They’ll sell you phony products. They’ll buy real ones in your name, using your personal identity information. They might take loans out ‘on your behalf’. It’s even worse after the crime, since the bad guys still have your personal information.
Selling ‘You’
These days, information is power. And personal information is the key to effective marketing and effective scamming. Companies and criminals alike pay good money to get comprehensive information on consumers, and these lists are sold and resold on a regular basis. You never know who’s got the goods on you.
Spam
Last year, an estimated 183 billion spam messages were sent per day, accounting for fully 70% of all email traffic. No wonder our inboxes are full! Many spammers are located offshore, beyond the reach of the law. The worst offenders spoof the email addresses of other people, pretending to then send their spam messages from that location. You don’t want spam. And you don’t want people to think you’re sending it, just because somebody else hijacked your email address.
Phishing
Phishing is the act of sending an email that falsely claims to be a legitimate entity in an attempt to scam the person receiving that email into surrendering private information that will be used for identity theft. The email usually directs the user to visit a web site where they are asked to update personal information, such as passwords, credit card, social security and bank account numbers that the legitimate organization already has. But the web site is bogus and set up only to steal the user’s information.
Spoofing
Email spoofing, web site spoofing, IP spoofing – they all involve somebody pretending to be somebody else. A fraudster gains unauthorized access to your computer, then sends out millions of spam emails, apparently from you. And you get the blame. Or he creates a copy of the web site belonging to an online bank or a well-known shop, and then sends out a spoofed email purporting to be from the company, with a link to the site in the email. Once there, you’re prompted to “login” – and that’s how they get your username and password.
