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There are many types of software on the market that offer net filtering services. Which one of them you will choose is definitely up to you. Analyze each one of them and decide which one suits you and your family the most:

In today’s world the identity theft happens very often. There are those waiting at the corner wanting to steal what is so precious to us: our own identity. Identity theft happens also, or even mainly, on the internet. You cannot imagine how easy it can be to lose one’s identity with all those smart thieves wanting to steal it. However, you can protect yourself from identity theft at least to some extent.
Before you start protecting everything on the internet, it is important for you to know that thieves might not be interested in everything you have. This is what they are mainly interested in: credit card numbers (probably the most obvious), social security numbers, driver’s license numbers, ATM cards, various credit reports, online passwords, Pin numbers, email addresses, phone numbers, home or business addresses, dates of birth, mortgage information and phone calling cards.

During the last few years I read about many cases where criminals, employees or even students were caught trying to break into computers. Since we store more and more important information on computers, the danger of somebody breaking into a computer is huge. Students may want to break into a computer to change their grades, employees may want to erase some data and criminals may want to obtain credit card numbers. I think that we often leave very important information on various computers not realizing really that there are many people who would benefit from such information, even to the degree that they would be willing to hack into it. In my opinion we should be careful what information we store in computers and secondly every computer should have some basic protection, as even a password required to login to Windows is better than nothing.

A recent study shows that there are a lot of malicious-code attacks being aimed at mobile devices. This malware is often hidden within legitimate applications, which makes it hard to detect. There are different consequences of being infected with malicious programs, including the fact that malware can compromise information on your device. Backing up important data from your mobile devices might be a good precaution against circumstances that you will not be able to predict. You should take into account that programs like Google Earth or other popular software and games can contain malware. This is a relatively new phenomena when it comes to mobile devices, because even thought such tactics were utilized in PC malware, only recently the mobile devices became in danger as well.

If you are a parent, you might feel a little bit behind when it comes to technology in comparison to your child. You have probably been growing up without the access to the internet and for your child the internet is as real as anything else around him. One of the things that you can do to understand your child better is to keep yourself informed of what is going on in the virtual world. Visit sites like MySpace to learn what this whole thing is about, read technology news and enter at least one forum. Try to monitor what your child is doing online. If possible, try to participate in some of the online activities with him. Teach your child to never believe the person behind a profile. This will avoid many disappointments in the future and might prevent some bad situations.

Viruses affect our computers in a negative way. They come to our PCs as unwanted guests that we want to get rid of. There are some steps that you can take to prevent viruses from invading your computer:

When it comes to viruses there is no reason to panic, but rather try to take the precautions I mentioned and hopefully everything will be fine.

Passwords are use to protect all of the accounts on the internet. You can protect your email, MySpace, gaming, blog, forum and subscription site account among others. That is why choosing a proper password is important, but unfortunately people are not very creative when it comes to choosing password. It appears that one of the most popular passwords is “password”. Another popular one is “qwerty” and the famous “123456”. As you see they are not very complicated and even the worst hacker in the world will be able to hack into your account if you are using such passwords. My advice is to take your time to device some complicated password like “aif3nd5f” which you could remember easily due to the fact that each number and letter would stand for something important in your life, but strangers would never be able to guess it.

If you want to protect yourself from viruses it is a good idea to know what to protect from. This can be achieved by knowing what are the most dangerous viruses circulating in your area/country. MalwareCity has an interesting map, which shows exactly that. You can choose a continent such as North America or Europe, and after you move your mouse over a country you will see the top five viruses. Additionally you will be able to see the infected percentage and compare it within different countries. I am not sure how the infected percentage was calculated, but it looks alarmingly high, as some countries had an infected percentage of 90%. You can have access to the map by visiting the link below:
http://www.malwarecity.com/real-time/virus-map.php

Making photos and uploading them to sites like Flickr has been a hobby of many enthusiasts. Unfortunately some people try to take advantage out of it and are selling pictures taken from Flickr on sites like eBay and claim that they are their own. It is not easy to spot such tactics and even if you are the one who made the pictures it won’t be easy for you to rack each photograph you have made. Even if you are using some tool to detect duplicate images, it is easy to change the size of the picture by slightly cutting the bottom or right/left side of it and this way it should be impossible to track whether the photos are being posted anywhere else. Your best bet is to watermark your pictures.

This feature will be very useful especially if you are working in a company that shares the same network of computers. While going on a lunch break you do not want anybody to mess up with your computer and turning it completely off and then on when you are back might take too much time. In order to lock your computer, press the Windows button, which is located at the bottom left side of your keyboard and the letter L at the same time. Now you are free to go. After coming back just press Ctrl + Alt + Delete and insert the right password. Remember however that this solution might not work in every computer network. If it does not work, ask your network administrator for tips on how to make this feature possible on your computer.