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3 Tips For Making Your Email Account Private And Secure

Don’t think that the Email Privacy Protection Laws will protect your privacy if you leave your personal information available for everyone to see. To keep your information safe, you must set your privacy settings, don’t share your information, and remember to log off when not on the computer. Continue reading to discover why Email Privacy Protection alone, won’t keep you safe if you don’t.

Your identity is the most important thing you own, it is unique and precious. The best thing you can do to help protect your information is to set yourself up for success with your email account. Set your email account to a more strict privacy setting. Doing so, decreases your chances of unwanted or potential hackers to your email. Now that we have covered setting a strict privacy setting, we need to explore what else you need to know about keeping your email account safe.

It is imperative that you keep your keep your email information private. It is hard to tell whether or not that friend that you gave your user name or password, will keep your information as sacred as you would. Keep your user name, password, and email to yourself. Don’t write it down, send it in an email, or mention it over the phone, you never know who may be observing you. Keeping your information to yourself is a big key to this puzzle, but you need to know what else can protect you from identity theft.

Your computer is the key to securing your important information. It is important that you take steps to keep yourself safe from identity theft. Make sure that you log off after every site you are logged in to, so you are not leaving an open window of opportunity for potential hackers. Also, whenever you leave your computer, remember to log out of your email account, especially if you are at work. Securing your information is important, and will only help along with the Email Privacy Protection Laws.

That pretty much sums it up, you can help protect your identity along with the help of email privacy laws. Help protect yourself by creating a higher privacy setting, not sharing your information, and logging off your email account when finished. It’s time you show the world that you are ready to give yourself the extra protection you need and along with the Email Protection Laws, you can be safe too.

For securing in transit remember the majority of email is carried in clear text and as such easily intercepted by anyone with the right skills and tools. The simplest fix for this is to encrypt your traffic, this can be achieved using a VPN solutions – as per this video demonstrates

The Internet Censorship Debate

As with most things are life, there are always positive and negatives. This is especially the case with the Internet and leads almost inevitably to the Internet Censorship Debate.

It is inarguable that the internet has changed the world. It has made the way we research easier; we have the wonders of the world at our finger tips; delight and desires realised at the touch of a button and it has revolutionised the way we shop and keep in touch with one another. This is especially helpful for those in remote places who long to keep connected to the rest of the world.

But there are negatives to the World Wide Web. It is now easier to access inappropriate material and the internet is a scouring ground for criminals to prey on the young and vulnerable.

As the internet has become more mainstream and embraced by society, the powers that be have censored the internet. All countries have some form of censorship imposed upon them; some may be rather lax whilst others take firm control over what can be viewed over the World Wide Web.

No one is disputing that the internet can be a dangerous place full of uncertainties. But the level of censorship that government applies can be questioned.

Within certain countries the internet is totally restricted, the government decides what can and can not be viewed. Impossible, I hear you cry! But it is true. In these countries the government control all computers that have internet connection capability. Now, this obviously is the extreme of internet censorship.

But the government will obviously always argue that censorship is for the good and the welfare of the public. Protecting the young and the vulnerable is the reason for censorship. Yet, when there are no clear definitions of what is offensive or harmful, and then the debate flares. internet censorship debate Internet censored

The reason that there is such a debate over internet safety is down to the impact that this censorship has over the basic human right of Free Speech.

Some argue that censorship of the internet limits free speech and this goes against basic human rights. This is true, however there are laws relating to Free Speech that concern speech when it id classed as harmful, offensive or insights hate.

The problem arises, however, when considering what is classed as offensive. Everyone has a different view point built up by their own beliefs and experiences. If the internet was censored due to what every person found offensive, I doubt that there would be anything left.

This is where the internet debate begins to get stuck. Depending on the individual’s viewpoint depends on whether internet censorship is a positive or negative regime.

Australian Internet Censorship Laws

The internet censorship regime was implemented in relatively recent years and has been the topic of many heated debates. The Australian internet censorship regime is comprised of both law and regulation. These are implemented at both commonwealth and State and Territory level. This is because the Constitution does not have the power to issue this regime independently.

The Commonwealth part of this regime applies to the any “objectionable” material or anything that is deemed unsuitable for children. If there is anything on the internet that falls into these two categories the sites will be issued with a “Take Down” notice. This will be issued by the government regulator OFLC. They will be given a time frame in which they are to remove the content.

The State and Territorial side of this regime then tag team with the Commonwealth and can prosecute the providers or creators of the “objectionable” material. The procedures however vary from state to state and territory to territory.

The Censorship regarding the internet has raised many questions about the restrictions and the impact that these have on free speech. In relation to any other parts of the western worlds, the internet censorship laws are the most restrictive. They operate in secrecy and withhold some information about how categories are judged. This has raised more that a few eyebrows with not only activists, but also the general public.

Having it in the law that the internet is restricted, filtered and monitored, creates some issues with the people who brought this regime in.

The Australian internet censorship laws consist of two filters. One of which is mandatory and prevents any “Unwanted” material to be viewed by the general public, along with filtering any illegal material as decreed by the internet laws. These laws are comprised of: The Protection of Children Act, 1978; Civil Government Act, 1982; Sexual Offences Act, 2003; Memorandum of Understanding, 2003.

No one is questioning the filter preventing the illegal content coming through; in fact this can only be a positive thing helping to squash such internet sites. The public, however, have an issue with the “Unwanted” aspect of the legislation. This has never been defined by the Telecommunications Minister and this dictates what the filter prevents the country from seeing. However there was no survey or vote taken place as to what the general public feel is “Unwanted”.

The law is there to safe guard the vulnerable and young, and ministers argue that it has been successful in this, although there is yet to be any formal evidence of this.

Internet Privacy Protection – Is there a Need?

o we really need to be concerned with protecting our privacy on the internet? Are there really legions of people spying on us and watching our every move. Well hopefully this article will give you some knowledge of the issues that are really involved in priivacy protection on the internet.

So who is likely to be spying on us and why?

Well let’s be clear, internet crime is big, very big, the totals are never going to be exact as we simply don’t have a record but you’d be safe to assume it’s going to be counted in billions of dollars world wide. Many, perhaps the majority of these crimes are not listed, recorded or even noticed so an estimate is all we’re going to get.

There are many major crime syndicates who are targeting the internet. Cyber Gangs in places like Brazil, China and Eastern Europe have very sophisticated criminal networks. Stealing over the internet from you and me is immensely rewarding and relatively risk free. You can see the attraction to the criminal fraternity big rewards, safe and very low risk.

So we know that gangs will routinely target the average internet surfer, furthermore many will be extremely careful in how they steal from you but there are literally endless ways to steal your information and ultimately your money. For instance I have seen a sealed copy of windows XP which looked 100% legitimate bought from Eastern Europe, it was shrink wrapped, had a licence, manual included but it had an extra bonus. The CD contained a version of Windows XP with spyware and trojans already installed, as soon as you used this version of XP your details, accounts and passwords would be passed out to a remote site on the internet.

Just like you lock your doors to protect your possessions and home, many people do the same on the internet. I want my privacy protected because online I pay bills, order goods, do my banking and many other activities which involve my financial and personal details. Do I want these details logged on servers, routers and at my ISP – well no not really.

You see it’s not that hard to steal personal details online, it’s slightly harder to make money from them but not too difficult. It’s certainly the only way a gang of cyber criminals in Rio De Janerio will be able to steal from you without you holidaying in Brazil. If you did discover your bank account has been raided like this, what could you do? IN reality all you can do is try to get your money back from your bank or credit card provider, either way the criminal will be unlikely to pay for his crimes.

It’s certainly worth checking out how you can add another layer of protection when you surf online, proxies and VPNs are one possibility. However you should stay away from unmanaged, free proxies that you can find online, simply because they are often run by the criminals themselves in order to harvest passwords and email accounts. Try this as a useful introduction –

How to keep your Internet Surfing Privacy

Everyone’s getting more concerned with internet privacy and with good reason. A large part of our lives is conducted online, we shop, bank, socialise even date on line in some cases. All that involves information, personal information being transmitted online.

So what’s involved in keeping your internet surfing privacy in tact ? We transmit so much personal information across the internet that it is not surprising that online theft is growing at an alarming rate. The simple fact is that the internets success has been built on a very simple protocol called HTTP (Hyper Text Transport Protocol) which is fast, efficient but unfortunately transmits everything into clear text. Anyone who intercepts this data can pick up an awful lot of information about each and everyone of us.

So how do I get some Internet surfing privacy?

Well there’s a few key areas but these are the most important.

Information Stored on your PC
Your browsing is tracked and monitored and personalised by a long collection of techniques of which the most common are cookies. These little text files are stored on your computer to record account details, preferences and personal details. To be fair they are used primarily to improve your browsing experiences mostly but they still represent an extensive record of your browsing. Fortunately if you are concerned with Internet surfing privacy you can easily delete these records. Most browsers allow you ‘delete browsing history’ which will delete all the cookies, temporary internet files and images stored on your PC. Google Chrome even has an incognito mode which does this automatically.

Hiding your IP address
Every web site you visit has logs, and they will record your IP address in these logs. Everything you do, download andlook at is recorded in these logs which can be tracked down to a specific computer via the IP address. This is also quite easy to fix and it requires using an anonymous proxy server. This server sits in between the web site you visit and hides your IP address so that it canot be recorded. There are anonymous proxy servers all over the internet but be careful, a large proportion of them are hacked virus infested servers which actually steal your information anyway. These are much, much worse than just getting your IP address logged in a web server,never use an anonymous proxy server that you don’t know about as it will be the worse move possible for your internet surfing privacy.

Encrypting your Web Browsing

The most important in my opinion for real privacy in your surfing. All your browsing is conducted in clear text as mentioned above, in fact the most detailed and comprehensive list of all your online activities exists in your ISP. This is why governments across Europe and the world ensure that they have access to these logs and ISPs are legally bound to store them for up to two years. However if you encrypt your connection then these and all other logs of your browsing are unreadable. How do you achieve this? Well there are two main methods using an encrypted SSH tunnel or an SSL Tunnel. This creates an encrypted session which can protect your surfing privacy completely.

This is just a starter but probably the most important thing is to be aware, think of the web sites you are visiting, realise that you could be monitored or intercepted. Be very wary of entering any personal details onto any suspect sites sites. Here’s a useful video about hiding your location (IP address)

Some Security and Anonymity Articles

Some Useful Security and Privacy based Articles

A video about the risks of relying on SSL – Safe Browsing.