How to safeguard our personal and financial data?

Nowadays, many people are relying on the Internet to connect and communicate with each other throughout the world and this is why Internet is said to be world without borders. While we want to become the member of some websites or to subscribe the services provided by them, this website will require us to register some of our personal information such as name, age, gender, date of birth, email address, password and etc. Besides, when we are accessing the online buying, we need to fill in our financial data like names, addresses, phone numbers, bank and credit card account numbers and etc. Information transmitted over the Internet has a higher degree of security risk than internal networks because Internet are open to anyone. So in order to protect our personal and financial data, we suggest some of the prevention methods:

a. Install a firewall
A firewall is an integrated collection of security measures designed to prevent unauthorized electronic access to a networked computer system. It is also a device or set of devices configured to permit, deny, encrypt, decrypt, or proxy all computer traffic between different security domains based upon a set of rules and other criteria

b. Password protect
Create a strong password or pass-phrase to files or hardware that we use to store our personal and financial data. In creating the password, we should use a reliability security system on the files or hardware so that it wouldn't be hacked easily. Furthermore, we should not create a password which can be easily guess by others. Besides, do not reveal any personal information or particularly passwords to anyone.

c. Trusted site
When the Internet users want to make online purchase, they are advised to make purchase only at trusted site, well-known, or sites that are using reputable payment processors such as Paypal or Google Checkout. To prevent our valuable information been stolen by the hackers, we need to check for padlock icon that verify the particular website is safe before we make the purchase. Thus this can ensure that our personal and financial data will be protected and remain confidential.

d. Avoid accessing private information in public
You are advise not to access your private information when using the public wireless. Besides, when you are accessing your private information in cyber cafe, make sure you log out completely and never choose to save login information such as user name and password on computers. If the users want to do such activities, they are advise to do it at home using their private computer.