Preventing identity theft essay
At all times, information has been considered a huge treasure, and today it has completely turned into one of the most expensive products. The growing opportunities for copying and spreading information, the development of e-commerce and the mass communication tools contribute greatly to the abuse of personal data accumulated in computers and on the web, and in the hands of frauds, this information may easily become an instrument of crime, used for selfish purposes and posing a threat to the legitimate interests and rights of an individual. Nowadays, identity theft is performed by using latest technologies of phishing and spoofing, recycler scanning, surveillance and hacking. Therefore, personal information is now in serious need for protection, and further we will attempt to produce several recommendations on preventing identity theft.
First of all, one must remember that identity theft occurs not only on the web, but also outside of it. A recent study found that identity thefts occur much more often due to throwing important documents in trash, mailbox inbreak or wallet loss, than due to purely computer and Internet carelessness (Biegelman 45). Therefore, above all, it is important to ensure that the documents containing personal information (e.g., account statements) are disposed properly, the mailbox is locked safely, and the wallet is cleaned from all the documents except those that an individual really needs to carry around. Often, data leakage also occurs via removable media and unofficial channels of communication: flash memories, USB-drives, Bluetooth or Wi-Fi access points, so the security of access to USB-ports and other peripheral equipment should be double-checked every time to control leaks.
Another top-rated leakage channel is an e-mail account, as well as other personal accounts on different online services. As Biegelman (289) sates, the first protection rule is that all the e-mails or phone calls with requests for personal data should be ignored. The fact is that phishing e-mails look similarly to the emails from factual companies an individual deals with. Such e-mails typically report about problems with the bank account, claiming some prize or other urgent issues that would get a victim to a fake web-site and require to log in. In order to recognize a phishing site, the domain name signs should be carefully checked. On a whole, official letters from companies never contain the demand for password confirmation or financial information provision due to the privacy policy (Biegelman 291). Still, even without visiting spoofing web-site, the opening of such e-mails may result in bringing viruses, which will later look for passwords to personal accounts (Biegelman 51). In order to provide e-mail security, it is recommended to remove all the personal information from marketing databases and unsubscribe from commercial and targeted mailing lists, as well as make sure that the ban for passing personal data to other companies for marketing purposes is uniquely formulated for all the services an individual is registered at (Archer 25). Performing transactions through accounts attached to the e-mail address, one should use official sites of banks or secure electronic payment systems (Biegelman 292).
The basis for protecting computer mainly consists in applying protective software (antivirus, anti-mailware, firewalls, intrusion prevention systems, vulnerability managers) and its timely updating. A user is highly recommended to install all the protection service packs provided by the operating system developer, run anti-virus software to check online activities, regularly update virus database, and configure the firewall setting (Biegelman 295; Archer 26). Modern anti-virus solutions include not only signature protection, but also more progressive facilities, such as behavioral analysis of programs, application-level screens, control of critical data integrity and other methods of protecting user accounts and servers from backdoors, worms and keyloggers (Biegelman 67-69). In addition, the usage of OpenDNS is not only an effective measure to speed up Internet connection, but also an opportunity to filter the incoming traffic. This means that the OpenDNS service will notify a user in case of possible virus threat, attack or phishing site visiting.
To protect personal accounts, one should use strong passwords, combining uppercase and lowercase characters, as well as create unique passwords for each of the accounts and change them regularly (Archer 23). Identity theft prevention measures also involve the refusal from sharing personal data on social media pages; these accounts should reveal only information one would agree to be included into commercial databases, while all possible bank identifiers like the most visited banking outlet, mother’s surname etc. should be fully eliminated (Archer 29). It is also rather effective to hold back from installing suspicious software. This typically makes computer much more vulnerable to the intrusion from outside, especially as a result of installing various kinds of games, screensavers, cracks, key generators, etc., as soon as the websites distributing such software are often caught at spreading viruses (Biegelman 91).
The implementation of the abovementioned protective measures is believed to significantly decrease the risks of identity thefts.
