How to Protect Yourself from Data Theft Online
In the previous article in this series, you learned about malware and how it can infect every part of your coputer. Now, you’ll learn about some of the ways malware and other programs and applications can steal your data with the intent of identity theft. While data is stolen for a number of reasons, most hackers actually steal it and then data dump it on the Internet for others to find. This puts your data at a larger risk than if the hackers were simply using it for their own means. Why? Because most data theft apps steal significantly more data than a few people can reasonably go through.
Rather than discuss that, we will discuss the different ways that people steal data, namely browser hijacking, phishing, cyber spying, and keyloggers.
How Does Data Theft Work?
When stealing data, hackers can choose to use a number of different options, and therefore can steal your data in a number of different ways. This makes it slightly harder to protect yourself from would be thieves, but far from impossible. Simply being aware of the options, knowing how to recognize them, and being proactive about protecting yourself can help you to stop and avoid attempts at data theft. Most data theft involves either subterfuge by replacing something you expect with a fraudulent website or program, something akin to cyber burglary, where the hacker breaks into a website or a security problem on your computer, and the installation fo malware.
Most Popular Types of Data Theft
There are other types of data theft not listed here but you can get a good idea of the most common methods.
Browser Hijacking – Browser Hijacking can appear in the form of an app for the browser, a program or app on your computer, a plugin, or might not appear as an installation at all. A browser hijacker has a few main priorities, and the most common is ad injection. The second most common is working as a keylogger, which then steals your data. In some extreme cases, a browser hijacker can inject software into your Window’s computer, which can then spy on you, steal your data, and even permanently damage your computer. Most browser hijackers are available as add-ons to free downloadable software and shareware. These programs can be avoided simply by hitting ” Do Not Agree” or similar during the installation process. Most installers rely on the fact that you’re just hitting “Agree” as quickly as possible to get your free software, and will install whatever they throw up at you.
If you are constantly seeing browser ads, your browser tab is being redirected (Opening up ads in a new window is a technique used by many torrent sites as a normal process though), or you’re having issues that you didn’t have before, you can look for new installations, new extensions, etc. and try to solve the problem.
Phishing – Phishing is a little bit more complicated than browser hijacking because it attempts to disguise fraudulent links as legitimate ones. The most important [...]
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