According to the U.S. Department of Justice, victims of identity theft in America
rose from 8.6 million victims in 2010 to 16.6 million victims in 2012.

Today, we are hearing more and more about cyber attacks like the infamous 2013
hack on Target, where millions of names and credit card numbers were stolen.

In light of most recent events like Western’s Internet outage from a Direct Denial of Service (DDOS) attack and phishing attacks targeting Western employees, many students may be wondering how to keep their personal data safe from intruders.

Here are some good basic practices to protect your information from being exposed to snooping eyes:

1: If it doesn’t need to be online, don’t put it online.

From family photos to the photos that you might dare to send through Snapchat: if
you don’t want people to see them, don’t let them leave your phone or computer. Events like last year’s “The Fappening 2014” scandals are a good example that not even Apple can completely protect your privacy against social engineering hacks.

2: Encrypt, encrypt, encrypt.

Next time you’re web browsing on your phone or your computer, look at the URL of the website you’re on. At the far left of the URL, you should see an ‘http’ or ‘https’. The ‘s’ in ‘https’ stands for secure, meaning that your session with that
particular website is secure. ‘Secure’ in this case means that each packet of data being transferred between you and the website is encrypted with a special key.

If you only see ‘http’, your information is readily available to anyone connected at some point between your computer and the server, and you should not transfer sensitive data such as credit card numbers, social security numbers, or other vital information.

3: Stay updated.

Software is riddled with vulnerabilities. As researchers discover these vulnerabilities, they inform the programmers that can patch those security holes. The patches are released as updates. Those annoying pop-ups that harass you every day to update not only enhance your software to run faster, they also protect you
from the latest exploits.

4: Don’t download it. Don’t open it.

Don’t download and open things that you are unsure of. Emails from unknown senders are almost guaranteed to have malware in whatever attachments are attached to the email. On the contrary, emails in .zip format from known senders could also be dangerous if you don’t know why you’re receiving that email from that person.

Malware will compromise your computer and can do anything from completely locking
you out of your computer to sending every single stroke of your keyboard to an unknown location for the malware’s creator to use as he wishes.

By following these four guidelines, you will reduce your chances of getting your
personal information stolen. But the truth in the matter is that your information is never truly safe once your computer is exposed to the Internet.

When you swipe your card at the grocery store, your card information travels over the Internet. New exploits are being discovered every day that can compromise even the most secure systems. But by following safe practices, you can limit the chances of your identity from being stolen.