Time Magazine and The Express-News, among others, carried feature stories about privacy issues, viruses, hackers, and other invasions of PC. The Time Magazine article was concerned with identity thieves. The Internet is not a private place. There are nine areas that are being watched by law enforcement officials to protect against this Internet privacy invasion. 

• First 

unauthorized users can steal and use your identity to do you and your computer mischief and harm. A dedicated thief can find your name, Social Security number, credit card numbers, bank-account information, mother’s maiden name, and just about any other bit of information required to steal your identity on the Internet. The article went on to say that this was the fastest growing white-collar crime. 
• Second 

individuals may be unintentionally giving data about ones self during searches through the Internet. WWW sites may be able to observe your surfing within their boundaries. “Cookies” are the most noticeable event that gathers data about your Internet movement. For many WWW surfers, the browser may also provide personal data to each site visited by disclosing personal preferences, which includes name, address, e-mail address, and other personal information. 
• Third 

there is a good chance that the personal information gathered or provided to a WWW site may be sold or stolen from the WWW site. Web retailers are gathering large amounts of data on individual purchasers and are selling it to other retailers. This can be very specific personal data such as who is buying cancer drugs or contraception, pornography, or books. The Web sites themselves are not the most secure places in the WWW. Hackers are getting unauthorized personal data from many of them by breaking into the site and copying or destroying the data. 
• Fourth 

that WWW site you just provide your credit card to may be a fake site just waiting for you to provide that personal data to. Federal authorities have recently broken a Russian theft ring that was “spoofing” a real Web site. Near-identical domain names are easy to obtain and can be obtained for unauthorized reasons. 
• Fifth

local and state government have been placing property records on-line. The Bexar County Apprisal District, for example, has Bexar County property records on-line. These records are usually searchable by name. Many states have completed placing arrest and court records on-line. All of these records have personal data such as social security numbers, addresses, minor children names, and other data subject to access to anyone. The federal courts are using a program called PACER (Public Access to Court Electronic Records) to make court records available to the public. Critics of open records are beginning to have some input into the slowing of this practice. 
• Sixth 

Data brokers, for-profit companies, and people who do not like you may be broadcasting your private data on the Internet. Data brokers get their data from public records and put it into forms that can be readily transmitted on the Internet. The data is sold for profit by them. Groups or individuals who have access to personal records for some reason of their own may elect to publish that data on the Internet. 
• Seventh 

your company or your spouse may be spying on your computer movements. Companies have a legal right to monitor employee’s WWW surfing, e-mail and instant messaging. Surfing the wrong Web site can get instant termination to an employee. Personal e-mail may uncover information that you do not want placed in the open. SpectorSoft , is finding that its hottest sales are in the home, where its marketing pitch is selling to spouses and romantic partners.  Spector 2.2 is a stealth program that records every movement on the target computer and secretly sends it back to the individual doing the snooping. The program looks at all e-mail and Web site searches made on the target computer. This program is typical of spying programs. 
• Eighth 

others can use your computer to spy on you. Hackers can get into an individual’s computer and look through it if the computer or network defenses are not in place. This is especially true in the case of broadband Internet connections, which are direct with no dial-up. Trojan Horses, computer worms, and viruses make use of this direct connection to do damage or steal data. 
• Ninth 

there exist cyberstalkers who may have something against you. This may be the case if you make someone mad for some reason. They can post personal ads on the Internet that may be damaging to you. Much of this cyberstalking falsely has you expressing desire for explicit sexual acts or some other false desire. Usually, phone numbers and addresses accompany the stalker’s notices. Most states are in the process of enacting legislation to counter these threats.

Hackers are attacking individuals almost as much as they used to attack large business servers. Part of the reason is that many business networks and servers are protected better than in the past. The reminder of the reasons lies in the individual computing power now available.

 Why are individual PCs being hacked, attacked and invaded. There are several answers. Among them are, individual PCs are now powerful enough to handle hacker demands, broadband connections are direct (open to the outside world all the time), our operating systems have enough holes to allow hackers ease of entry, browser programing languages are readily hacked, and we as users are lax enough to allow all this to happen. The Time magazine article disclosed that Microsoft has conceded that all versions of Windows 2000 and its new XP OSs may have a “serious vulnerability” that lets hackers take control of another’s computer. Microsoft has issued software patches for Windows 2000 and XP. Also, the Internet itself is about the most open forum that currently exists. There are no safe-guards built into it.

PC power, 500 MHz plus CPUs, etc., coupled with leaky OSs and direct connections to the Internet are an open invitation to unauthorized attacks on individuals. In the past, these attacks were only available in the corporate and other large scale servers for networks. As the price of computer power comes down, more individuals are purchasing high performance machines, i.e., 500 MHz to 1 plus GHz based CPUs, which can process lots of data authorized or unauthorized. Hackers are also finding holes in all of the OSs, Windows, Linux, and others, that allow viruses, worms, and e-mail hacks to be installed to do internal and external damage. It is not just with the OSs that problems arise. The Internet Web browsers all have holes that allow unauthorized entry. The WWW programming languages, HTML and JAVA, are open invitations to invasion of privacy and attack. Finally, the Internet protocols TCP/IP that make it so easy for us to be globally in touch do not have safe-guards. It is up to individuals to provide the safe-guards to keep unauthorized entry from our computers.

What Can We do About Security and Privacy?
The first step is to become informed and stay informed about the security and privacy issues that arise. Two Web sites have been written about that keep information up to date concerning who and what is invading our computers. One is <www.cookiecentral.com> and provides an overview of cookies. The other one is <www.privacy.net> and provides a demo of how ad networks like Double Click collect personal information. Blocking cookies is fairly easy. PC World’s downloads offers three free cookie blockers. Idcide becomes part of the browser utilities and takes on the advertiser cookies while letting benevolent cookies into your computer. Idcide can supply tracking details about who is looking at your surfing. AdSubtract stops cookies and blocks bothersome ads. It stops all cookies except those you choose to accept from up to five Web sites. A $15.00 version has unlimited custom settings and lets one sort ad cookies and trusted-site cookies by giving them different colors. Naviscope, the third utility, also stops all cookies and ads. It has other tools to eliminate other Web annoyances, such as sounds, pop-up windows, and blinking text.

The Time Magazine article had ten ways to develop a more secure cyber safety environment for your computer and entries into the Internet.

1. Install a home firewall and virus protection. 

Hackers are looking for vulnerable computers. Home firewalls such as BlackICE Defender or Zone Alarm can be setup to protect your home computers and networks. I prefer Zone Alarm. One of the commercial virus protection utilities such as McAfee or Norton need to be used and kept up to date. I use Norton.
 
2. Be careful of what you give out. 

Do not send personal information such as home address, phone numbers, and names and ages of children to strange Web sites. Post personal pictures on Web sites that have password protected access.
 
3. Do not download anything unless you trust the sender and the file. 

E-mail can contain viruses and spyware utilities.
 
4. Use dummy e-mail accounts. 

Use a secondary e-mail account when filing out on-line profiles, posting messages to newsgroups, or strangers. A hotmail or Yahoo e-mail account is a good way to do this.
 
5. Do not let your browser be a blabbermouth. 

Remove your name and address from the browser.
 
6. Opt out. 

Check the privacy policies of Web sites visited. Many have “Opt Out” meaning that unless you tell them otherwise, they will share your personal data with others.
 
7. Do not accept unnecessary cookies. 

Use a cookie blocker to reject unwanted cookies.
 
8. Use encryption for sensitive data. 

Be sure the credit card transfer you do use is within a secure encrypted Web site.
 
9. Consider using an anonymizer. 

Web sites keep a record of your visits and may be able to identify you by name, hide your identity by going through a anonymizer Web site such as <www.anonymizer.com>.
 
10. Clear your memory cache after you surf the Internet. 

Clear the memory cache, effectively a log, of sites you visit. Any access to the computer can not see the surf trail of your visits.

You can not be too safe in your Internet surfing.