Privacy & Security Tips

December, 2003

Reasons To Protect Yourself From Spying

• You have confidential information on your computer (bank account information, credit card information, employee records, etc.)
  

• You are suspecting your spouse is spying on your online activity.
  

• You like to cyber chat with the opposite sex, and don't want your spouse to get suspicious.
  

• You don't want others obtaining your email and internet passwords.
  

• You use personal email accounts like Hotmail and Yahoo and don't want your employer reading these emails.
  

• You don't want others seeing what pictures you look at online.
  

• You want to protect you and your family from identity thieves, credit card thieves, online stalkers and pedophiles.
  

January, 2004

• Antivirus Programs combat the traditional threats of viruses, worms, and Trojan horses but do little, if anything, about Spyware installed by sneaky Websites or suspicious employers, or via software downloads.

• Yet Spyware is a growing scourge: ISP Earth Link says 40% of calls to its tech support are Spyware related. (PC World, July 2003)

• Spy Software, commonly referred to as "Spyware", is any software application that was designed to secretly collect information from a user.

 
February, 2004

• What is E-Mail "Phishing"?
  
  Phishing is the term coined by Internet scammers who imitate legitimate companies in e-mails to entice people to share user names, passwords, account information or credit-card numbers.

  
  The term Phishing comes from the fact that Internet scammers are using increasingly sophisticated lures as they "fish" for users' private information.
   
  The most common ploy is to copy the look and feel of a web page from a major site and use that design to set up a nearly identical page that appears to be part of the company's site.

March, 2004

• More than 100 million computers are being monitored around the world.
   
• Spy software programs allow anyone, even a novice, to secretly record ALL of your online activities and all typed texts.
   
• Spy software can be installed on your PC remotely, without physical access to your PC.
   

Employee Monitoring

• 30 to 40% of Internet use in the workplace is not related to business. (IDC Research)

• 70% of all Internet porn traffic occurs during the nine-to-five work day. (SexTracker)

• 37% of workers say they surf the Web constantly at work. (Vault.com)

• 77.7% of major U.S. companies keep tabs on employees by checking their e-mail, Internet, phone calls, computer files, or by videotaping them at work. (American Management Association)

April, 2004

Child Monitoring

• With an estimated 24 million children now online, one out of five have been solicited for sex in the last year. (Congressional Study submitted June 8, 2000)

• One in four children were sent pictures of people who were naked or having sex. (Congressional Study submitted June 8, 2000)

• An estimated 725,000 children have been "aggressively" asked for sex, defined as an offer to meet in person. (Congressional Study submitted June 8, 2000)

May, 2004

Spouse Monitoring

• 57% of people have used the Internet to flirt. (Greenfield and Rivet - Internet Use & Abuse Survey 1999)

• 38% of people have engaged in explicit online sexual conversation and 50% of people have made phone contact with someone they chatted with online. (Greenfield and Rivet - Internet Use & Abuse Survey 1999)

• Evidence proves there is a high correlation between on-line cybersex and subsequent real-time sexual affairs. (Greenfield and Rivet - Internet Use & Abuse Survey 1999)

• 31% of people have had an online conversation that has led to real-time sex. (Greenfield and Rivet - Internet Use & Abuse Survey 1999)