Internet Scams? With missing children? Yes, it is true, even the topic of missing children along with faked Amber Alerts are used as traps on the Internet. However, you do not have to be caught by this, or any other type of Internet scam.

It’s unfortunate but true. Most of these online scams are known now as “phishing” scams and are typically known for masquerading as well know banks and credit card processors. The goal is to steal your information and use it for nefarious purposes such as stealing your identity, emptying your bank account, scamming others and even stealing email addresses.

Even child safety experts and their line of work get side tracked by this. It seems as though no one is immune today. There are some scurrilous individuals around that play the “missing child” alert to scrape and steal email addresses for their spamming purposes.

One of the latest phishing scams is an Amber Alert. Masquerading as the well known and highly effective alert system to find and save abducted children, this latest is particularly loathsome. The alert mentioned a 13 year old girl missing in Ohio. It was sent via an email chain with innumerable addresses on it.

You do not need to be a helpless victim of this or any other phishing scam online. Here are some great tips as to real versus fake. You can learn to know the difference. You can understand what is a phishing scam and what is not in order to keep yourself, your children and your families safer online.

First, stay calm. “Oh No! Another child missing! Let’s help!” is a natural reaction. The point is, it’s a reaction. Make your first rule about any unsolicited email, no matter who it is from, to hold a very healthy skepticism about it. Take time to read further. If you did not request it or it seems to elicit panic or a harsh emotion such as, “Your account is suspended!” chances are it’s a scam.

Two, true and valid Amber Alerts do not come as singular emails forwarded on from individual to individual. The “chain email” or even funny-looking links to follow are not indicative of real businesses contacting you.

Third, check to see if the email address is valid or a dead link.

As a rule, whenever you get questionable stuff like this type of email, go to Google. Simply enter it in the Google search box and add the word urbanlegend. Or, you can go to snopes (dot) com.

With these two tools you can find out very quickly whether it is real or not. The second thing that people are not aware of is that often these emails are used to gather email addresses for email spamming. If you scroll down you can see everyone who every got this line. When you get those ads for breast enlargement etc, you know where it came from!

Like many students, one law school student used Google to come up with a list of online research sources while conducting research for her money laundering thesis. Throughout the writing of her paper, this tool was very helpful to her. After working on the project for a short time, the student faced the annoyance of being directed to a site that had nothing to do with money laundering each time she typed specific key terms.

Because the problem refused to go away, the law student could no longer cling to the hope that it was simply a problem with Google or the Internet and had to reluctantly acknowledge that her computer had been bugged. Though nobody enjoys being annoyed, human pests are easy to get rid of. Stopping adware and spyware, the type of bugs that plagued the student, is much more difficult. The student did not have the advanced technology training to deal with this type of problem and like most average students, she uses her laptop only for basic research and the writing of her papers. So she became stuck with annoying ads popping up all over the place. And truth be known, this is not even close to as bad as the problem can become.

The case above is eerily similar to that of an increasing number of individuals who find their computers malfunctioning after being infected with spyware and adware. In 1995, spyware premiered as a phrase to describe an especially nasty type of computer infection, and that term has gained increasing popularity ever since. Most spyware are actually computer programs or scripts that infect and imbed on other peoples computers and in this way violation is accomplished, as it allows another party to accomplish spyware objectives or even access another persons personal sensitive financial information.

Through studying keystrokes, hard drive material, and web browsing history, this spying is accomplished. Spyware proves that you do not have to be in a James Bond movie to be a victim of intense infiltration tactics. Invading other’s privacy is a highly intrusive act that definitely makes the innocents involved victims. Spying on criminals with spyware could possibly be justified as it could help society for the greater good, and though you would probably never get a government agency to admit it, is allegedly taking place everyday, Too often though spyware programs are used to track personal information of totally innocent people, obtaining sensitive credit card information and online banking account login details. Because of the hostile nature of these potential infiltration’s, every computer should have an updated anti-spyware program to help keep them safe.

Other types of less malicious spyware, such as malware and adware, should also be blocked for full protection against vicious computer infiltration. It is not difficult to find, online, many helpful spyware and adware blocker programs. These programs both remove and disable existing bugs and help prevent the future installation of similar malicious software. Once a computer has fallen prey to malicious infiltrating programs, they usually experience a drastic drop in the speed with which they function. Spyware continues to live up to the appropriateness of its name, as many spyware infections hide their presence - if not their harm - so well that no one can detect that it is spyware causing the difficulty. Spyware blockers can help a lot in keeping your computer safe from invasion and your personal information private.

Consider the latest “Die Hard”. Some teenagers, few masterminds and trillions of dollars being siphoned off the federal fund that has been deposited against people’s social security benefits. Do not think that it is a simple cinematic flick! Today hackers are so sophisticated that they can actually bring a law abiding citizen down on the streets. With the advent of technology making life easier for most of us, getting to shop from the comfort of our homes or transfer money from the safety of our living rooms, the fact remains that the nameless faceless cyber world is dotted with criminal minded people whose sole intention is to rob you off your identity, get access to all your important details and use those for their own benefits. How do you fight that?

Install an anti-virus. An anti-virus protects your computer from malicious viruses that tend to lodge themselves deep into your hard drive and copy all your data and transfer those to servers where you would not want your confidential information to be a hacker’s server. If someone sends you a virus intentionally or unintentionally, the anti-virus detects the virus and destroys it. Keep your anti-virus up-to-date. Set your anti-virus such that there is a weekly scan scheduled for all the hard drives in your computer.

Install a firewall: A firewall will always keep a check on the information that is exchanged between your computer and other computers every time that you are logged on to the internet. That way you will be protected from any unwanted code or application getting downloaded on to your PC inadvertently. Any data that do not meet the security requirement set by the program developer will be barred from entering your computer by the firewall. Always keep your firewall updated as well.

Act Smart:

Do not store personal information in your computer. Information like your social security number, credit card number, pins, bank account numbers, telephone numbers, addresses, etc.

Do not click on links that look suspicious. Most spam mails have links that should be avoided. These can lead to downloading of applications that may erase your hard drive.

Always scan all attachments using your antivirus before opening it or running it or installing it on your computer.

Do not exchange personal information in chat rooms, through mails or instant messages. Divulge your credit card details or social security details only to secured sources or through secured websites.

Do not buy pirated products, software or programs. These may send messages over the internet when you are working with the particular software.

Do not download executable files to your PC from unknown sources. Be extremely cautious while exchanging information over the internet.

Keeping the above points in mind will help you in keeping your computer secure. Although every day a number of Trojan viruses or worms are coded and let loose over the internet, we must always do the best that we can in order to ensure security. A computer is an expensive device. A simple insecure download can render the whole machine useless.

Spyware are the programs, which covertly gathers user information through the user’s Internet connection without his or her knowledge. They generally come bundled as a hidden component of freeware or shareware programs, which you download from unsecured and un-trusted sites.

Once they have been installed on your system, Spyware programs constantly monitor your activities on your computer and send that private information in the background to the person who has planted that spyware on your computer. Spyware can also gather information about e-mail addresses and even passwords and credit card numbers. They are the real threat to your online privacy and some of them have been instrumental in causing some of the greatest Internet Scams.

Anti-spyware, the Ray of Hope:

With the growing trends of E-commerce and online transactions, spyware programs are becoming the biggest online threats. And with their growth, lots of Anti-spyware programs are now available on the Internet. Many of them are free and many of them are paid.

Personally, I am not in favor of using FREE anti-spyware programs, because they do not get updated as fast as the paid software and the lack of customer support, which is very essential. Internet Security is not to be taken lightly, and spending a few bucks today on your security, might be an intelligent investment instead of repenting later.

Having said that, if you are inclined to use a FREE anti-spyware, I would recommend following Free Anti-Spyware Programs.

Best Free Anti-spyware Programs:

1. Spybot Search & Destroy: Freeware spyware removal and detction program for Windows.

2. AVG Anti-Spyware Free: Free anti-spyware program for Windows, created by GriSoft.

3. Spyware Terminator: Free anti-spyware program with real-time protection, manual and scheduled scan,
safe quarantine, automatic update, etc.

4. Spyware Detector: Scans for spyware/malware for free; spyware removal is not free though.

5. A-squared free: Removes Trojans, Worms, Keyloggers, Dialer and Spyware/Adware from your PC. The free version does not offer real-time protection.

6. SuperAntispyware: Free anti-spyware program for home use; runs on Windows.

7. Browser Hijack Retaliator: Internet Explorer protection. Prevents IE from being ‘taken over’ by malicious scripts and ActiveX controls.

8. Arovax AntiSpyware: Free anti-spyware program for Windows; sponsored by user forum.

9. SpywareBlaster: Free windows program which protects against spyware: prevents the installation of ActiveX-based spyware, adware, browser hijackers, dialers, and other potentially unwanted software. blocks spyware/tracking cookies in Internet Explorer and Mozilla/Firefox, restricts the actions of potentially unwanted sites in Internet Explorer.

10. Damage Cleanup Engine: Freeware spyware removal program for Windows. Terminates malware instances in memory, removes malware entries from registry and system files, scans and deletes malware from local hard drives.

Home computers are popular among intruders. Home computers with internet connections usually stay connected and this is a good time for intruders or hackers to do their ill will. Intruders may steal your bank records, credit cards information and thus spend your money without your permission.

Your computer including the hard disk space, your processor and your internet connection will also be at risk from hackers. Unscrupulous individuals deliver viruses in your computer by hacking your system.

In order to protect your home computer, you will need the following:

Install Antivirus programs
Be careful in opening emails
Install a firewall program
Backup important files
Use unique password

Install Antivirus programs

Virus may harm your computer including the files in it. If virus enters your computer it may be hard to delete it entirely because virus signature oftentimes lingers in your computer system.

Thus, it is important for you to install an antivirus program. By installing an antivirus program you can avoid virus entering your system.

Scan your computer for viruses using the anti-virus program to avoid damage virus can do to your computer.

Be care in opening emails

If you see an email from a sender that you do not know, never open this email. Some viruses are passed on through file attachments. Thus, you will need to avoid opening emails from unknown senders especially those with attachments.

If someone you know accidentally passed a virus to you, make sure that your antivirus program is working properly.

Install a Firewall program

Use a firewall especially if you have internet connections at home. Some malware enter your system when you download free softwares. Even without downloading softwares, some hackers can enter your system through some other means.

It is thus important that the firewall works properly. This is to avoid intruders entering your computer and thus affecting the usefulness of your home computer.

Backup important files

To ensure that you can protect your computer and your files as well, keep a backup of your files in a CD or an external drive. This is to ensure that if your computer system develops issues, you can still retrieve your important files from the backup.

Use unique password

Your password may work to protect you as a person. Your password may also protect your computer from intruders. The most important protection you will need from using passwords in your computer is the protection of your bank details, credit cards details and even your computer system.

Never use your name or the name of anyone in your family as a password. By using capital letters, small letters and numbers in your password, you are creating a unique password that will work to protect your home computer.