How safe is our privacy data?(week4)

With the advancement of technology today, we normally save our personal or private data in our hard drive. The main reason we keep this data in our hard drive is for us to easily retrive our data anytime, and whereever we need to However, there are also numerous of online threats attack your computer system, personal data and privacy anytime without your attention while u access the websites.Malicious attacks are cyber attacks that can be further broken down into attacks caused by malicious code. The most common form of malicious code is computer virus. It’s a computer program can replicate itself and infect a computer without permission or knowledge of the user. The virus can easily spread by a user sending it over a network on the internet or by carrying it on a removable medium such as floppy disk, CD, USB drive. For example, the May 2000”I Love You” virus was a simple and small piece of code attached to e-mail which cause e-mail servers to overload and business to shut down email. It ever caused over $100milllion in US damages and over $1 billion in worldwide losses.

Spyware is any technology that aids in gathering information about a person or organization without their knowledge. On the Internet, spyware is programming that is put in someone's computer to secretly gather information about the user and relay it to advertisers or other interested parties.A Trojan horse is a destructive program that can cause serious damage by deleting files and destroying information on your system.

Trojans are also known to create a back door on your computer that gives malicious users access to your system, possibly allowing confidential or personal information to be compromised. Trojans unlike virus or worms, they do not reproduce by infecting other files nor do they self-replicate

Nowadays, identity theft has become general. Identity theft is online fraud that unauthorized collection and use of personal information such as social security numbers, signature, name, address, phone number, credit card information, usually for criminal purposes. Internet provides a new way for people to steal your personal information.

Crackers using internet chat rooms and spreading Trojan horses that drop key loggers on your computer to transit any passwords, usernames and credit card numbers you use on your computer back to the crackers for example paypal password . Internet identity theft has made many people hesitant about making a purchase online or signing up for what others consider everyday occurrences such as creating PayPal account, purchasing from e-commerce sites, using internet banking and checking credit card statements online