How to protect your identity online [Part 2][Extremely DETAILED]

4) Your e-mail

Your e-mail, the one you use to check on your everyday business or activities online. The one you rely to deliver things to you safely.

Question is, are you delivering to it safely? Probably not, or at least I hope you are.

The e-mail problem is an easy fix since all it takes is common sense.

If you have various accounts such as Social networks, have an e-mail specifically for messing around. If you have accounts for serious business such as your Paypal, Bank, etc...

Have an e-mail that only you have access to and is different from your regular "messing around" e-mail.

If you work for any companies or have services with an ISP, avoid using their e-mail services to register on important websites where your money is dealt with such as Paypal, AlertMoney, banks, etc...

Why? Because they have been known to get hacked leaving all your information exposed for hackers to gorge in. Instead, I would recommend focusing on big companies such as Yahoo, Hotmail, or Gmail since these are much more secured companies and will always be up 24/7 any time of the year.

Not much to say on that, just have different e-mails for different activities for security measures. Not only that, but also have different passwords that require extensive typing with various complicating symbols such as:

you%(3cool

That above is a ridiculous example, but I believe you get the idea.

You know what hackers love the most? Not having to do much work and having everything set for them easily for the taking. For example, if you are infected with a keylogger, a hacker would love to have 1 e-mail to have access to everything. So, this gives you an idea why you should have a variety at all times with up-to-date information to assure that you could retrieve it, in case if it were to get stolen.


5) What you sign up to
Ever wondered why you get so much spam e-mails? Well, it's simple. It's because e-mail collectors acquire a list of e-mails in which they can mass e-mail to send spam.

Just as I mentioned earlier, have an e-mail for messing around and e-mails for serious business. Avoid using an e-mail for all activities as this will only clog your inbox with useless e-mails that will steal your valuable time.

There are many websites which sell their database of e-mails to E-mail spammers for a certain amount of money behind the scenes or the collectors themselves have set traps through the internet such as Phishing to acquire a list of e-mails to spam.

Avoid registering to websites such as products and random useless subjects that promise to pay you money for signing up or trying their products.

Seems to me like it's common sense, but it's good to know.



6) Information you expose unknowingly

Well, I hope that I have given you a good idea of easily information can be acquired using the internet.

Privacy does not exists anymore on the internet.

If you use Social Networks, try to have your information concealed as much as possible from the public and do not expose valuable information such as Birthday, location, or name to keep yourself as underground as possible.

You have to consider that information could be leaked physically or electronically as well.

Keep yourself up-to-date and informed to know if a company you might use has been breached or not.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of...er_history

As they say, Google is your friend. Use it when you need it.

7) Keeping you safe

This is probably the most important part of the tutorial as this is where the most incidents occur due to infections or traps.

Infections or traps can range from:

-RATs (Remote Access Tool) which essentially give completely control of your computer.

-Keylogging which retains a log of all the keys you ever press on your keyboard.

-Phishing which retains a log when you manually input your information on a fake website emulating an original website.

-And more, but those above are the most common.

How can you protect yourself?

Around 90% of malware on the internet was coded to infect Windows Operating systems. I got that number from PC World about a year ago, forgive me if it's incorrect now.

Anyway, assuming that you run on Windows you are the ones are the highest risk of getting targeted or infected.

You will want to always have your computer clean and secured having the proper tools. All these tools are the best of the best and are all free. They are probably better than paid security software.

How do I know this? Well, there are websites where you can scan malware after you crypt them (making them undetectable) to ensure that they are not detected by Anti-virus of any kind. Avira is the one that people always have a hard time bypassing, so I can safely say that it's the best from my personal experience of crypting and scanning.

Download and install all these tools below and I can assure you that your computer will be protected 1000% better than what it might be as of now. Get the free versions.

http://www.malwarebytes.org/

http://personalfirewall.comodo.com/

Avira Anti-Virus - Follow the instructions on that link on how to get it free.

KeyScrambler Pro 2.7 - Follow the instructions on that link on how to get it for free. This software helps to encrypt everything you type on the internet.

If you use Google Chrome, get this:

https://chrome.google.com/extensions/det...ckof?hl=en

It encrypts all your website visits as https:// rather than http:// which makes you more secured.

If you use Firefox, get this:

http://www.eff.org/https-everywhere

It encrypts all your website visits as https:// rather than http:// which makes you more secured as well.

http://notendur.hi.is/~gas15/FireShepherd/

FireShepherd, a small console program that floods the nearby wireless network with packets designed to turn off FireSheep, effectively shutting down nearby FireSheep programs every 0.5 sec or so, making you and the people around you secure from most people using FireSheep.
The program kills the current version of FireSheep running nearby, but the user is still in danger of all other session hijacking mechanisms. Do not do anything over a untrusted network that you cannot share with everyone.
-Know that this is only a temporary solution to the FireSheep problem, created to give people the chance to secure themselves and the others around them from the current threat, while the security vulnerabilities revealed by FireSheep are being fixed.

The other option is using a different operating system which has a lower percentage of being targeted.

You don't have to spend tons of money on Apple computers, instead you can get a free operating system from the Linux distributions.

The easiest to use and most similar to Windows looks is Ubuntu. You can install Ubuntu as a normal program on Windows and once it restarts, it shows you the option to choose Ubuntu over Windows.

You can watch this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdI8_92QTkQ

To learn more in dept. It's very simple, so don't be afraid to try.

The video focuses on completely replacing your current operating system Windows and replacing it or dual booting with Linux Ubuntu.

If you are a noobie, I would recommend you stop at the part where he goes to:

Wubi Installer - Ubuntu

It's as simple as going Next, next, next on any normal installation and whenever you restart your computer, it will ask you to choose either Ubuntu or Windows.

Running under a Linux distribution will put you at around a 2-5% of getting infected with anything. Not only is Linux good, but you don't have to worry much about installing anti-virus or anti-malware software to keep your computer clean and running.

I have been running on Backtrack 4 R2, a Linux Distribution and I can tell you that I have NEVER been infected.

Well, I believe this is all I have to say.

I hope you guys learn something from this new tutorial.