So how confident are you that what you put into the internet or enter into the internet is… secure or safe?
According to the data protection act, your data should be removed after a certain period and should not be given to others. In most cases, spam e-mails come from web crawlers and bots that finds and collects the e-mail addresses as texts into a database. The system will then mass mail spam e-mails or advertisement (sometimes even phising mails!) to all the e-mails collated in the database. We can’t always trust the site we are entering details onto or what we put onto the internet, so lets keep it safe.

1. Make a side e-mail accounts for online registrations.
This is one of the best solutions to reduce spam (not the best but effective too!). Lets say you love registering on forums, you should then make an e-mail account specifically for these networks. But if your doing it for billing, ensure it is an e-mail address that IS NOT published onto the internet or used in any public domains.

Why So?
We should not rely on website security such as PayPal to ensure the security of our accounts. Instead, we should take precautions and make sure these billing addresses is unknown to everyone. Unless you are using it for PayPal that is, then thats a different case cause thats more/less in the private domains.

After all, creating an e-mail account doesn’t take long and most of the time is FREE.
Hotmail.com, Yahoo.com, Gmail.com; They love your business!

2. If your posting your e-mail, encrypt it or replace the “@”.
If you do however wish to post your e-mail onto websites that presents them on the public domain as a text that can be easily extracted through regular expression matching, replace the @.
Instead try putting: yourname[at]domain.com or yourname/at/domain.com, you can even add spaces to all of them or describe your e-mail like, yourname at website.com.
For websites mailto links, ensure your e-mail address is encrypted.
This can be done in many websites (by Googling), but if your lazy, try: http://www.dynamicdrive.com/emailriddler/
That way, no bots can be crawling onto your e-mail addresses! No worries for Facebook however, they make use of PHP GD to present it as text that can’t be copied! If your a Web Developer, this is an excellent way to secure private data as well!

3. File Security, Control Panels.
We have directory permissions for a reason. Make use of it and add an additional security to your current Control Panel or Files directory by setting password locks. With cPanel this can easily be done or just plain .HTACCESS. But by adding this added security, you can feel much safer than the standard exploitable control panel open/accessible to public like Wordpress. Once again, Do not rely on pre-made or current SECURITY. You must take a part in creating less advantages for hackers and exploiters.

Comprehensive Guide to .HTACCESS

4. Complicated and Vast Passwords.
Do not ever use the same password for every account you make. If you wish to do so, ensure it is for accounts of less priority. If lets say, you log into Facebook and Twitter the most, make sure they are both, completely different.
Also, make use of Password Strength Indicators and Password Generators to create passwords un-brutable. A simple method of Brute Force (Bruting) will test for random username and passwords until the access is true, by using simple passwords, your just making their job easier, complicated password will take longer to crack.

Strong Password Generator – Password Meter

5. Keep Track, Keep Organized.
One of the best method to ensure your information is secure (as most people say, what you put into the internet is forever there!); is to keep organized and managed. You should be fully aware of any websites you have registered to, and you have all rights to have them remove your details from their database if you feel is necessary (if your liable to). This also helps ensure whether you had registered with them in the past if you are to come back to an old site for example. You can keep organized by making use of filters to filter e-mails from different host into folders. Most e-mail clients/providers should have the ability to create folders.

6. Don’t trust anyone… Not even your friends.
I don’t really follow this one but yes. Don’t trust anyone or anything… Including web security. Your the only person you can trust, so make sure you do not hint out passwords to any of your friends or even share. If your not using your computer, log it off and ensure it has a password protection.

Example – Twitter Applications (using their API).
If you were to lets say login onto Twitpic (A image hosting site integrated to Twitter), and you were new to it. Before logging in (cause most sites may be phising sites), Google it, check the web popularity and perhaps see if its blacklisted. Normally when you search a site that is blacklisted, it would have a bad Alexa site rating/ranking, and most of the time, someone, somewhere would had made a blog or comment about it, this should be displayed as one of the results.

Remember to read the Terms and Conditions of websites too, just skim through it and most of the time in announcements and reminders, specific sites would mention things like, “We will not ask for your login details”. Ensure you look for things like that, so you won’t be manipulated in providing confidential credentials. It is not safe. E-Crime is the latest daylight robbery and anyone/anywhere can be scammed easily.

Once again, sorry for another long and procrastinating blog post!
Hope it is pretty insightful anyhow.