Most identity fraud happens through email. People follow links from their email, enter their information into a site, and the person trying to steal your identity has all of your information. There are ways to avoid identity fraud and precautions you can take. Follow the tips below to keep from being a victim of identity fraud.

Tip 1 – Don’t Follow Emails That Say You Have Won a Prize

I’m sure you have seen the emails that say you have won a prize. Stay away from emails like that. These emails tell you that you have won a prize and you will need to click the link in the email to claim your prize. Once you click the link in the email, you will be carried to a page where you will be asked to enter your personal information. That is when they will take your identity. Stay away from these types of emails, they are only out to steal your identity.

Tip 2 – Be Alert for Phishing Scams

Phishing Scams are people who impersonate websites and try to get your personal information that way. Let me give you an example of a phishing scam. If you have a Paypal account, you have probably seen the emails that ask you to please login and verify your information. 99.9% of these emails are phishing scams. Why? Because if you place your mouse over the link in your email, it does not go to Paypal. It will redirect you to some other site. When you click the link though, the site may look just like Paypal, but it’s not. It is a duplicate of the site. When you receive this type of email, you will need to look closely at the link in the email. Sometimes there is only one letter different in the URL, so be very careful of these types of emails.

Tip 3 – Do Not Use Your Primary Email for Blogs, Forums, Social Sites, and Subscriptions

Using your primary email address for things like forums, blogs, social sites, and subscriptions makes it easy for people to steal your identity. Once they get your primary email address, they find out just about everything else about you. This also opens the door for them to send you phishing emails. If you are going to sign up for forums, social sites, etc., create a new email account. You can create free email accounts with places like Yahoo and Hotmail. When creating these account, don’t enter your real information. Then use this address for all of your forums and stuff.

Tip 4 – Purchase a Firewall or Other Program That Will Help Protect You

There are programs available that will help protect you from identity fraud by checking your incoming and outgoing emails. One of the best programs that offer this type of protection is Zone Alarm Pro. To purchase this program, click here.

The bottom line to avoiding Identity Fraud is being aware of emails sent to you and not following links you aren’t familiar with in emails. Instead of following links to Paypal for example, type the link into your browser. If a friend sends you a link to something, verify that they sent it before visiting it.

To keep up with the lastest phishing and email scams, see this page.

Step 1 – Selecting the Password Protect Option from your C-Panel

The first step is to select the password protect option in your C-Panel. Once you have logged in, look for the Password Protect option. It should be located somewhere in the Security section of your C-Panel. When you locate it, click it.

Step 2 – Selecting the Directory to Open

The second step is to select the directory you want to open. If you are wanting to password protect the entire site, you will need to open the Root Directory. If you want to password protect a sub-domain, you will need to open the sub-domain directory you want to open.

Step 3 – Selecting the Folder You Want to Password Protect

Now, you will need to select the folder you want to password protect. If you want to password protect the entire site, you will need to select the /public_html folder. If you want to protect certain pages, you will need to select the folder of the pages.

Step 4 – Filling in Your Password Information

Now that you have chosen to password protect your site or part of it, you will need to fill in the information for the password and users. The page you are on now is where you can fill in all of that information. You will need to create a password and username. Multiple users can use the same username and password, or you can create one for each user. Once you have filled this information in, click the Save button and your site will be password protected.

Other Notes

You will need to go back and create each user if you are creating multiple users for the site. After you create one user, click the Go Back button and create another user. Repeat this until you have all of your users created.

To edit the password information, start back over from the top and you will be carried back to the page with your password information. There you can edit the users and other information.

SystemSuite 9 Pro is a PC Repair, Tune Up, and Security program. This program is a pretty much all in one type deal. You can tune up your PC and fix problems that often occur, you can be protected from hackers and viruses, and you can repair your computer with this program.

What Features are Available with Avanquest Software SystemSuite 9 Pro?

You will get many features in this software that will take care of just about all your security and repair needs. Let’s take a look at some of the features you will find in SystemSuite 9 Pro.

Registry Repair & Maintenance

Your system will often slow down over time. This is due to all of the files, history, cookies, and other stuff that stores on your computer as you use it over time. With the registry repair and maintenance feature in SystemSuite, you can defrag, repair, and clean your registry system to speed it up.

Internet Speed Optimizer

Over time, you will also notice your browser will slow down. This is due to the stored history files, cookies, and temporary internet files. The Internet Speed Optimizer will clean all of those files out for you. So, your browsing time will speed up. This feature works both in Firefox and Internet Explorer.

Windows Startup Manager

Often times when you install programs on your computer, they will load on start up. This will drastically slow your computer down. The more stuff you have on start up, the longer it will take for your computer to boot up. But with the manager offered in SystemSuite, you can monitor what is starting up with windows and delete it if you want.

Anti-Spam Control

The Anti-Spam Control will help monitor your email for spam. This feature will work with all of the major email services. This is a great way to cut down on spam if the service provider you are using does not have a spam protector.

Secure File Shredder

The file shredder will shred the files deleted on your computer. Even though you delete files, they are still on your hard drive. With this feature, it will completely remove the files from your hard drive. It’s like a paper shredder, only it shreds computer files.

Is Avanquest Software SystemSuite 9 Pro Free to Use?

You can download the trial version of SystemSuite and use it for 14 days. After then, you will need to purchase the full license to continue your service.

Overall Rating

Overall, SystemSuite is a great software because it has all of the tools one would need to keep your computer safe and up to date.

Phishing Scams are emails sent out to people that try to get the person to follow the link in the email. Once you have followed the link and entered your personal information, the person who sent you the email has your information. Phishing Scams come in all types of emails ranging from ebay emails to Paypal emails.

What are Some Well Known Phishing Scams?

There are some well known phishing scam emails you should be aware of. These emails look very authentic and can be quite tricky to people who aren’t familiar with phishing scam emails. Here are some of the most well known emails circulating the web.

Paypal – This email will tell you your Paypal account needs to be updated. It will tell you to click the link provided to update your information. If you place your mouse over the link, you will notice that it is not the real Paypal address. However, it maybe very close to the original URL. There could be only one letter different.

There are also emails that tell you your Paypal account is on hold for some reason and you will need to follow a link to take it off hold. Again, this is a way to get your personal information. Avoid links like this.

Ebay – Another phishing scam email is the Ebay email. This email tells you that an unpaid strike has been brought against you. It then tells you to follow the link to take care of that matter. Once you follow the link, you will be asked to enter your personal information, including your credit or debit card information. Once you do that, the phisher has your information.

Estates – These emails circulate all the time. These are the emails that say someone is dying and wants to send you their money or wants you to take over their estate. This is a phishing scam. When you follow the link and provide your information, the phisher has your information.

There are many, many more phishing scam emails circulating. To see more of the most usual scams, see this page.

How Can I Avoid Falling Victim to Phishing Scams?

There are a couple of things you can do to avoid falling victim to phishing scams.

• Never follow a link from your email.
• Always type the link in the address bar if it is something like PayPal or Ebay.
• Never use your primary email in forums, blogs, social networking sites, and newsletters.
• Install a software that detects spam and phishing scams.

Reputation Defender is the company behind a computer security and privacy product known as MyPrivacy. This service is available in three different pricing tiers and has plenty to offer its customers. For $9.95 per month, $7.95 per month (if purchased annually) and $4.95 per month (if purchased for two years) customers can remove sensitive and private information from the internet with ease.

MyPrivacy is a service that allows customers to remove personal information from the hundreds of websites that have the potential to release this information without permission. Information such as your name, address, age, phone number, past addresses, and even the names and information for close known relatives can be found on websites all over the Internet.

How Does MyPrivacy Work?

With this service, customers can use the program to remove all this personal information from search databases all over the web and protect themselves against unwanted telephone calls, any nosy friends and neighbors who may want more information than you’re willing to give, Internet troublemakers, credit card and identity thieves, and essentially anyone who does not need to have this information.

The MyPrivacy service works by searching the Internet for these databases and allowing the customer to remove the records. The service continues to work by continuously searching for more of these results and removing them. The MyPrivacy Plus service even works to protect the home mailbox of the customer by controlling the types of marketers that are allowed to contact the customer, and even grants them access to security professionals through a toll free number.

To have piece of mind and know your information is completely safe from a variety of threats online is very much worth using this service.

What is Zone Alarm Pro?

Zone Alarm Pro is a firewall program with many built features. It’s kind of like little programs built into one. Each one does something different which will protect your computer from hackers and viruses. Below you will find a description of each feature.

Network and Program Firewall

This part of Zone Alarm Pro will stop inbound and outbound attacks on your computer. Hackers are forever trying to attack computers to see what they can gain. This feature will stop that attack before it happens. Every time an attack is attempted on your computer a message will pop up and alert you that an attempt was just blocked. It will also stop programs from attacking your computer. The multiple layers of security in Zone Alarm will protect you from these attacks.

Anti-Spyware

Spyware is easily installed on your computer without you knowing. It is software that will record your every move. It records what you type in where and can record your passwords and more. Spyware is most often downloaded onto your computer when you download and install a program or game. With this feature of Zone Alarm, you will be alerted when spyware has been installed on your computer and it will be deleted.

Operating System Firewall

This is a great feature offered with the Zone Alarm Pro package. Often, hackers will create viruses that will attack your operating system, but with the Operating System Firewall, you will be protected from those attacks. This part of Zone Alarm will catch the attack before it happens, so you will not have to worrying about your entire computer going down.

SmartDefense Service

With Zone Alarm Pro, you will not have to worry about updating the latest versions and features of the program. The SmartDefense Service feature will automatically update your software with the latest versions and features.

Automatic Wireless Security

Often, hackers on wireless networks will try to gain access to your computer. But with the Automatic Wireless Security feature, you don’t have anything to worry about. This feature will protect you from the wireless attacks.

Email Security

This part is for your email. This will stop out going email from being sent if it has a virus attached to it. It will also check incoming email to make sure it is virus free. It also scans the attachments. This is great to have, because sometimes when you send an email, you have no clue that a virus is attached. This part of Zone Alarm Pro will take care of that for you.

Identity Theft Protection

Identity Theft is on the rise. Every time you turn around someone’s identity is being stolen, but with the Identity Theft Protection feature in Zone Alarm Pro, you don’t have to worry about that. This feature will protect your computer from hackers who are looking to steal your identity both online and off.

Is Zone Alarm Pro Free to Use?

Zone Alarm Pro is free to try for 15 days. After then, you must purchase a license to keep it. The licenses start at $39.95 for a single computer. You can download and try a copy of Zone Alarm Pro by visiting this page. If you wish to use it on more than one computer, you can purchase a separate license for that. To find out more about the license and prices, please see this page.

Overall Rating of Zone Alarm Pro

Overall, I will give Zone Alarm Pro five stars out of five because it is well worth the money with all it offers. With this program, you will get everything you need in one program to protect your computer from many different types of attacks.

Migo Digital Shredder is a software program that will shred your files, folders, and other things on your computer you want to delete. When you delete your files, folders, and other things, they’re not completely deleted from your computer.

With the Migo Digital Shredder, you can completely delete them from your computer. It’s just like shredding papers in a shredder at home. This program will shred your computer of the files. They will be completely removed from your computer.

How Does Migo Digital Shredder Software Work?

The Migo Digital Shredder software is very easy to work. Users with little computer knowledge can use this program. All you do is open the program and drag and drop the files you want to destroy. The drag and drop feature makes it easy on you to shred the files, folders, and other stuff you want to delete from your computer. When you drag and drop the files into the program, the program then cleans them completely off of your hard drive. It wipes the files out. Be careful when you are deleting stuff. If you delete it by accident, there is no way of getting it back.

Can I Try Migo Digital Shredder Software for Free?

Yes, you can try Migo Digital Shredder Software for 15 days. After the 15 days, you will need to purchase a license to continue using the program. The license is $29.99. It is well worth the money.

What Exactly Will Migo Digital Shredder Software Shred?

The Migo Digital Shredder will shred anything you drop in the window. If you want to get rid of it, drop it in the window of the program and it will be taken care of. Here are some of the things you can shred with Migo Digital Shredder.

• Email from Outlook
• Files in the Recycle Bin
• Instant Messenger Files
• Photos
• Word Documents
• Cookies
• History Logs

Overall Rating

I give this program 5 stars. It is easy to use with the drag and drop feature. It shreds everything you need to shred to protect your identity and privacy. It is reasonably priced and overall it is a great program.

Rod Beckstrom

“During the past year the NCSC received only five weeks of funding, due to various roadblocks engineered within the department and by the Office of Management and Budget.”

However, Beckstrom’s resignation letter made clear that the primary reason for his resignation was in reaction to a power-grab by the secretive Department of Defense intelligence service National Security Agency. Beckstrom echoed the concerns of privacy advocates in warning of the dangers of concentrating too much power in a single agency.

“While acknowledging the critical importance of NSA to our intelligence efforts, I believe this is a bad strategy on multiple grounds. The intelligence culture is very different than a network operations of security culture. In addition, the threat to our democratic processes are significant if all top government network security and monitoring are handled by any one organization (either directly of indirectly). During my term as Director we have been unwilling to subjugate the NSCS underneath the NSA.”

Beckstrom’s resignation came fast on the heels of Director of National Intelligence Admiral Dennis Blair’s February 25th  statement to the House Intellgence Committee . Blair said that the NSA, which oversaw the Bush Administration’s warrantless wiretapping program, should be in charge of cybersecurity rather than the DHS.

Blair’s views are not without their supporters among President Obama’s advisers. Paul Kurtz, who led the President’s transition team cybersecurity group told Forbes in an interview that the NSA, “needs to be a part of the program despite its controversial reputation.” Kurtz further favors modeling national cybersecurity management on counter-terrorism efforts.

Beckstrom and Kurtz represent two competing visions of what the NCSC’s job should be. Whether the NCSC will adopt Beckstrom’s economics and game theory driven securty model or a more authoritarian one informed by law enforcement and signals intelligence culture is likely dependent on Melissa Hathaway. Hathaway, a senior director at the National Security Council, was tasked by President Obama on February 9th to head up a sixty day review of all Federal cybersecurity systems and is expected to be the top candidate to replace Beckstrom.

Related

View Rod Beckstrom’s 2008 Black Hat security conference presentation. [Quicktime]

Purchase Rod Beckstrom’s book The Starfish And The Spider, co-authored with Ori Brafman.

MySpace is a great destination for Hackers. Why? Because it is very easy to hack. All they have to do is run a password cracker across the login with your email and they are in your account. So, how can you protect your MySpace account from hackers?

MySpace.com

The answer to that is, you can’t! You can make it harder for hackers to get into your account, but you will never really keep them out of your account.

So, how do you make it harder for a hacker to gain access to your MySpace account? You change your password! Change your password every couple of days. Changing your password is very simple and doesn’t take but a minute to do. It is best to choose about three or four passwords and then simply rotate between them.

Changing your Password in MySpace

If you are new to MySpace, follow these instructions to easily change your password. It only takes a minute and will help protect your MySpace account.

• Login to your MySpace account.
• Click the Account Settings link beside your default photo.
• Click the Password link on this page.
• Fill in the required fields.
• Click the Save All Changes button.

Remember to do this every couple of days to help protect your account.

How Hackers Take Advantage of Weak Passwords

Hackers prey upon weak passwords. The weaker the passwords, the easier they can get in. So, make sure you use a combination of letters and numbers in your password. They can still get pass that, but it will be more difficult for them. When using a program to scan for passwords, it will quickly pick up weak passwords. If you have a strong password, it will take the program longer and the hacker will end up giving up on that one.

Why Do Hackers Want Access to MySpace?

There are two reasons hackers want access to your MySpace account.

Reason #1 – Advertising Websites

The hackers who hack your MySpace account and spam the comments section with advertisements are only looking to get the word out about their website or a website they are affiliated with. These hackers normally send out comments to every one on your Friend’s list and it appears to have come from you. However, it really came from the person who hacked your account.

Reason #2 – Stealing Your Identity / Looking for People to Prey On

Reason #2 is a bit different. These hackers are the ones who prey upon people. They are looking for identities to steal, children to prey upon, and more. These are the hackers you really want to protect your MySpace account from.

Protecting Children on MySpace

You should monitor your child’s every move on MySpace. Kids are extremely vulnerable to the hackers looking to prey on children. Check out these two articles on protecting your children, “Protect Kids On MySpace” and “Making MySpace Safe for Kids”.