It is an oversimplification when people say you don’t need to protect your data online unless you’ve got something to hide. They aren’t using the same internet as I am!! I think this opinion is more a matter of not knowing the risks than thinking they don’t exist. The simple fact that there is a huge information war going on all around us and the information generally being targeted is ours, that’s why I use anonymous software.
So who is exactly after our data ?
Well here’s some examples from a very long list.
Search Engines, want to build up profiles to target their searches, and their advertising.
All sorts of companies want to build up profiles of specific users.
Democratic Governments – to catch criminals, terrorists and monitor their population looking for’baddies’.
The Less democratic governments – track and imprison political dissidents, quell any opposition.
Identity thieves, our information is gold to them, why risk your liberty stealing from someone in the real life, when you can wipe out their bank accounts from Cyberspace.
These are black and white statements but of course there are a myriad of real life examples which lie somewhere in between. Remember though there are many, many people incarcerated at the moment who have ’said the wrong thing’ online. Just as there are huge crime rings spreading from Eastern Europe to South America which specialise in Cyber crime.
Nobody has the exact figures, for how much is stolen online. Any guesses would be inevitably be innaccurate but experts agree the figures would be truly frightening. The sophistication of criminals grows every year, some of the most advanced cyber gangs like the ones in Brazil have frightening resources and technical skill.
You will see it at every level, take for instance your average spam or phishing email – have you noticed how these have changed? A couple of years ago they were badly worded and illegible pieces of rubbish which were obviously false. Nowadays even the most aware internet user may have to look very carefully to see if they are fakes. The advances in this area have often been exceeded in other areas.
Take for example using proxy servers online for various reasons. People often use them to bypass fitering, surf anonymously or to access content in a country which is blocked or maybe like BBC or Hulu. Identity thieves will target these users and ‘release’ proxy servers for people to use. This is because when you use a proxy server you generally leave a huge log of all your data on that server. Every web site you visit and all your data is left in the logs of the proxies, they can even intercept Secure SSL traffic with a few little techniques. Doesn’t take long to amass some details, some account names, passwords – maybe access to your online bank accounts.
There are so many reasons to try and protect your data online, but everyone should be aware of the dangers.
