How to safeguard our personal and financial data?

1. Keep our personal and sensitive data off your computer- Nowadays, there are many network threats that hack into our computer. We might not know when our computer is being infected by the virus or spyware program; therefore, we must try our best to keep our personal and sensitive data such as bank account numbers, passwords etc off from our computer. Lots of people tend to leave their computers on for long periods of time and it can be compromised at any time, so if there is no data to steal, then we have already done a lot to prevent data theft. If we really want it on our computer, then at least make sure we encrypt it using certain security program.
2. Avoid saving credit card info, etc on shopping sites- It is quite risky to save our credit card info on shopping site such as Amazon, eBay to avoid repeatedly type; someone might eventually hack into their database and downloads thousands of credit card numbers, bank account numbers, etc.
3. Only connect to secure wireless networks if you can- We must always aware of not to connect to any unknown wireless network. Connecting to non-secure wireless networks is asking for trouble. Therefore, we must make sure we connect to known wireless network instead of simply connecting to an unknown network.
4. Clear your browser’s cache after an online transaction- We must always remember not to save our password in the computer. Sometimes we will get message from our browser asking us whether we want it to automatically save your passwords, etc, click NO.
5. Make sure anti-virus and anti-spyware are installed and up-to-date- We can either buy excellent anti-virus programs like Kaspersky Anti-Virus or free programs like AVG, which is pretty good too. Either way, make sure we have something installed. However, most people usually stop there and don’t install any anti-spware programs. That’s a big mistake! Nowadays, spyware programs send our data to their creators so they can make money. Some good anti-spyware apps are Windows Defender, SpySweeper, SpywareBlaster, AdWare, and Spybot Search and Destroy.
6. Use a secure Internet browser when you are online- Firefox is considered more secure than IE and that’s what a number of sites also have tested. IE 7 has more security features than ever before, but it still has lots of holes also. Using a more secure browser can help protect against browser hijacking, etc. Anyway, most viruses are written for IE since it’s more common, so it’s more likely to be hacked.