Understanding Online Fraud and Security Threats

In a recent article published by ITWeb, top online security threats were identified as being on the rise during the past year. As reported such security threats have appeared to increase parallel to the world’s current economic state.

Piggy-backing off the instability and vulnerability that consumers are currently experiencing as a result of the current state of the global economy, internet fraudsters are becoming more active in stealing the identities of unsuspecting audiences along with increased Phishing practices intended to gain access to sensitive personal information as well as banking or credit information.

“Desperate times call for desperate measures”, with online criminals feeling the heat themselves as well as having identified a window of opportunity in which they are now pursuing in order to take advantage of those susceptible to such online fraud

I thought that perhaps it would be a good idea to discuss such online treats in greater detail for better identification and classification as not many people are savvy to the different types of online fraud that can and does occur every day.

Phishing: This is an attempt at attaining personal, financial (banking login information and credit card details) and other confidential online user details by way of impersonating the identity of a legitimate and authentic online entity. Many banking institutes have fallen prey to such phishing attacks whereby online fraudsters will send an email requesting for client to confirm details such as bank account details, online banking login details or perhaps even credit card details which are then later compromised.

Protect Yourself: Never ever give out username’s or password details to anyone that asks you to do so. Any reputable website will be well aware of such security threats and will not ask you to confirm such information in the first place.

Identity Theft: As the name would suggest, identity theft is where online scammers assume the identity of others and register on websites (generally in bad network neighbourhoods and on dubious websites) under a false alias. What has been known to occur of late given the current financial crunch that all economies are currently experiencing is again, while assuming a false identity, credit applications are being applied for along with evading poor credit ratings and other criminal charges.

Protect Yourself: When registering or logging into a website that you commonly visit be sure to check the URL of the website and that this address is the correct one. Eg: www.jobs.co.za vs. www.jobz.co.za etc.

Spyware: while not as common but still ever present in the technological realm, spyware is the use of suspicious and illegal software onto personal computers that secretly monitors the users behaviour and to a certain extent takes partial control over the user’s interaction with their computer.

Protect Yourself: Install good quality Anti-Spyware software that will run regular checks on your computer to make sure it has not been compromised.

Malware: More commonly known as computer viruses the term malware refers to Malicious Software / coding that infiltrates and damages files and the general operation of a computer, with the user normally being unaware until the damage has already been done. Malware or computer viruses come in the form of Viruses, Worms, Trojan Horses and Dishonest Adware and generally incept a user’s machine by way of the internet (visiting bad server networks) or via email.

Protect Yourself: Install a good quality antivirus program. As with the Anti-spyware, this program with run regular checks and ensure that your PC is protected and should it identify any form of the above mentioned viruses, that it isolates these and removes them from your system.

I hope that these explanations have helped you to better understand the types of fraud that occurs online and how better to protect yourself against such criminal behaviour.

It is a sad fact but one we all have to work with and protect ourselves from as we delve deeper into the infinite online universe.

Hope you all have a fantastic evening and I will catch up with you tomorrow.

Namaste’

Jo Blog

joblog@jobs.co.za

Monday, February 2nd, 2009 at 5:17 pm and is filed under General Jobs.co.za, JoBlog's Workplace, Recruiter Recommendations, Top Tips for Job Seekers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.