Internet Defences

The most important defences for Internet use are knowledge and awareness. You should use these five rules to help keep your system safe:

1) Always be suspicious when you are using the internet.
2)Keep your password safe and only give confidential information to trusted sources.
3) Never go on-line without your system being fully protected and use up-to-date internet safety software.
4) Internet attacks and threats are on the increase, therefore it is vital that you know what the latest threats are.
5) Keep your main operating system files up to date by regularly downloading patches and security updates.

Passwords

A password is an important element of Internet defence. It is important to have a strong password that other people cannot easily guess. Strong passwords should contain a mixture of letters, numbers, other characters and upper case letters.

Weak or bad passwords are easy to guess and can result in your system being accessed.
Examples of bad passwords are things like your favourite band, your favourite TV programme, your pets name etc.

Phishing

Phishing is the Internet word for Fishing. You may have used the phrase "fishing for information". This is essentially what phishing is, but applied to the Internet rather than talking to someone face-to-face.

How to prevent it:

Beware of e-mails that ask for confidential information. Phishers will ask to be e-mailed personal information that no genuine institution would request in an e-mail, eg: PIN numbers or passwords to accounts.

Beware of e-mails that are not personalised. Phishing e-mails are very rarely personalised, for example, they will never use your forename or surname in the e-mail. They cannot do this because they have to send the same e-mail to many different people.

Identity Theft

Identity Theft

This is an extremely serious Internet threat which is becoming more common. The fraudsters use many techniques, such as phishing and spoofing (sending e-mails from false addresses) to obtain information about potential victims.

If you were a victim of identity theft you could:

Have money taken out of your account
Someone could apply for credit cards on your behalf or they could go buy something and you would get the bill.

Grooming

Grooming is another extremely serious Internet threat that is causing great concern. This type of threat is aimed mainly at young people. Typically, an older person will use the Internet and its services, particularly chat rooms and social networking sites, to communicate with younger people. The groomer will not give accurate information about themselves and in many cases will pretend to be a younger person.

How to prevent it

Put a computer in a family room and have a parent monitor check it.

Talk to them about the dangers of being in a chatroom

If you are meeting up with them take someone with you

Don't give out personal details

speak to your friends about it