Hello everyone. This is my fourth blog entry for Tech Today, your tech blog source. Today’s blog topic is regarding of safety in cyberspace. Are we really safe on the Internet? Are we 100% secure from being watched and/or attacked by an unknown hacker at a moment of time? We may never know. But there are few advice on how to protect your PC and your life out of dangerous paths. There have been many identity theft incidents by minutes in the process in our country. We are all victims of stolen information by unknown thieves around the Web. It harness the Internet, waiting for the right victim to come upon and snatch by cracking codes and numbers to access authorized personnel info. This is how hackers get its way as if a thief robbed a bank out of the blue. Hackers can disguised themselves as adware or spyware to sneak into your PC and grab any information it can to fulfill its destiny (if it has any). This is mainly why people goes out and buy security software to avoid any hacking activity from the outside world. Even if one think the software might stop them, hackers still can sneak in passed detection and firewall. They have been down the road before and they will do anything to steal your information to accusation.
For example (true story); my friend was a victim of identity theft two months ago. He has received many calls from his credit card company, letting him know that he owes this amount of money due to purchases that supposedly he committ. He never made or committ those purchases. He has never been to locations that the credit card company told him he has been. He had to deal with the whole situation by checking accounts online and calling each company about his issue. It took him days to get things straightened up. Hopefully, he hopes that everything returns back to normal by this month or the next. Identity theft (or unauthorized access information) is even worse than robbing money from a bank or the liquor market down a street. FBI can lock-on hackers’ locations via their computer info station in Washington D.C. One beep on their whereabouts, times up for the hacker’s stealing spree.
Another thing about being safe is cyberpredators. Many kids do have experienced this years ago. They would meet with each other on an IM-based chat room and/or social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook. One person (which another don’t know who it is) never reveals its age, appeareance nor gender which is preying for victims. For example; I remember back in 2002, one girl was talking to an unknown person on an instant-messaging program one day. The person told her that he is a young boy at the age of 19 and claims to look like a high school football player. The unknown person also told her to meet him at a nearby mall the next day to get to know each other. She accepted the request. The next day, she went to the mall to meet the person. The person she met didn’t describe as what he said on the IM program. He was a 45 year-old man. He dragged her out of the mall and took her in the back of his van. After few hours later, she was pronounced dead. The investigators reported that the girl was sexually assaulted and beat up. Seriously people; what is this world coming to? It feels like young teens are not safe on the Internet than being safe out in the streets. Parents should really look out for their kids so they won’t become the next victim to cyberpredators.
Finally, hacker attacks is the biggest issue around the world. Hacker tend to send out its viruses and/or trojans to random computer systems for fun or purpose. I was the victim of the hacker attack (once), but then I protected myself of the use of a software that my friend gave me years ago to keep hacker attacks away from my computer. Viruses and/or trojans may sneak up on your computer via email attachment; going to unsafe websites and/or download unheard software. Even downloading music via programs like Limewire or any program may cause this too. It is helpful with anti-virus programs to finish the job and making your PC 100% virus-free. But most times, virus won’t go away. It stays hidden until when PC is shut off or ticking like a time bomb to spread and corrupt your system files and so on.
The question is: who is protecting us? We can’t protect ourselves. The government agency should do something about these issues that I have went over. It’s like if they are telling us to have self-defense to someone that has a concealed weapon and ready to start a murdering spree. We may have programs that will defeat these purposes, but it is really not enough. We need more strength and protection for our Internet, our PC and our lives. We’ll see what will happen in the near future. I hope we get enough protection to save our skins. This has been my tech blog and I’ll see you next time.
Alonso V
