Excerpted from Every Monday Matters by Matthew Emerzian and Kelly Bozza
Oprah.com |
September 12, 2009
The emotional impact of Internet identity fraud has been found to parallel that of victims of violent crime. Remain cyber-safe by protecting your computer as if it were your wallet. Practice safe surfing. You'll be glad you did.
Create a password that has a combination of upper- and lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols for unlocking your computer and for accessing websites. Use a different password for each site.
Never use an automatic log-in feature that saves your username and password.
Always log off the Internet or your computer when you're finished.
Avoid storing financial information on your computer.
Find and use anti-virus software and a firewall.
Do not open e-mails sent to you by strangers.
Forward spam that is phishing for information to spam@uce.gov and to the company, bank, or organization impersonated in the phishing e-mail.
Order a free credit report every 12 months.
FACTS
81% of all households have a computer.
75% of those households have Internet access.
11% of identity theft information is obtained online.
Over 300,000 phishing emails are reported annually. (Phishing is a scam where Internet fraudsters send an e-mail or pop-up messages to a user falsely claiming to be an established legitimate enterprise in an effort to steal the user’s personal and financial information.)
3.1 days is the average life span of a phishing web site.
Over 1 million adult Internet users experience Internet identity fraud annually—2,983 a day.
