Tips to Protect Your Online Identity

1. Make a strong password. Stronger passwords are much harder to crack, and will eventually make the hacker give up. A strong password should contain at least one capital letter, one lower case letter and one number. One way to create very strong password is to base it off of a phrase. For example, the phrase "I went to Cal Poly and majored in Computer Science" would translate into "iwtCP2003amiCS." This makes passwords very strong and memorable.

2. Use different passwords on different websites. This is one of the most important tips in this article. If your password on one of the sites you belong to is compromised, that person has access to every other website you have signed up for. One possible way to combat this is to break up web sites into priority groups. For example, any site that in any way involves money or contains personal information gets a unique password. Less important web sites get the same password.

3. Make sure you know your friends on social networking websites. If a person with malicious intents was able to view private information on your Myspace or Facebook profile, they could possibly use it to reset your password using most web site's password recovery system. This brings up another important point. When deciding on a security question for a site, make sure the answer is extremely obscure, and not something publicly posted anywhere.

4. Check for hardware keyloggers. They can log everything that is typed on a computer, including passwords and emails. These will look like small usb drives between the port on the end of your keyboard and where it plugs into your computer. It is a good idea to check for these before using a computer from anywhere you don't trust.

5. Protect yourself from trojan viruses and software keyloggers. These generally do the same thing as hardware keyloggers, but are instead a software. They are much more dangerous, being able to send logs to anywhere on the internet, and therefore not requiring physical access. You can check for trojans and software keyloggers by running an antivirus. I recommend Avira's AntiVir Personal for its high detection rates and low system resource usage. If this is not an option, you can type your password with Window's built in On-Screen Keyboard, located at Start > All Programs > Accessories > Ease of Access > On-Screen Keyboard. Keyloggers will not be able to detect anything typed on this.

6. Don't fall for phishing scams. These will often appear as disguised links to popular websites that require your login credentials. The easiest way to combat phishing is by checking the websites URL, located near the top of your web browser. Make sure it matches the website that it appears to be.

7. Don't use public wireless internet (often called wifi). It is all too easy to intercept an unsuspecting person's username and password. If it must be used, make sure the site you are signing into has "https://" and not "http://." The "s" at the end means that all information being submitted is encrypted, so it appears as jumble to the hacker.