Threats of using online communication - On this blog I will be

explaining some of the threats of online communication.

Cyber bullying
Cyberbullying is the use of Information Technology to harm or harass other people in a deliberate, repeated, and hostile manner. Cyber-bullying could be limited to posting rumors or gossips about a person in the internet bringing about hatred in others minds or it may go to the extent of personally identifying victims and publishing materials severely defaming and humiliating them.

Spam
Electronic spamming is the use of electronic messaging systems to send unsolicited bulk messages (spam), especially advertising, indiscriminately. While the most widely recognized form of spam is e-mail spam, the term is applied to similar abuses in other media: instant messaging spam, Usenet newsgroup spam, Web search engine spam, spam in blogs, wiki spam, online classified ads spam, mobile phone messaging spam, Internet forum spam, junk fax transmissions, social networking spam, social spam, television advertising and file sharing spam. It is named after Spam, a luncheon meat, by way of a Monty Python sketch in which Spam is included in almost every dish.

Phishing
Phishing is the act of attempting to acquire information such as usernames, passwords, and credit card details (and sometimes, indirectly, money) by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication. Communications purporting to be from popular social web sites, auction sites, banks, online payment processors or IT administrators are commonly used to lure unsuspecting public. Phishing emails may contain links to websites that are infected with malware. Phishing is typically carried out
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by spoofing or instant messaging, and it often directs users to enter details at a fake website whose look and feel are almost identical to the legitimate one. Phishing is an example of social engineering techniques used to deceive users, and exploits the poor usability of current web security technologies. Attempts to deal with the growing number of reported phishing incidents include legislation, user training, public awareness, and technical security measures.

Pharming
The term "pharming" is a neologism based on the words "farming" and "phishing". Phishing is a type of social-engineering attack to obtain access credentials, such as user names and passwords. In recent years, both pharming and phishing have been used to gain information for online identity theft. Pharming has become of major concern to businesses hosting ecommerce and online banking websites. Sophisticated measures known as anti-pharming are required to protect against this serious threat. Antivirus software and spyware removal software cannot protect against pharming.

Peter Greer

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 Denial of Service DOS

A DOS attack tries to make a web resource unavailable to its users by flooding the target URL with more requests than the server can handle. That means that during the attack period, regular traffic on the website will be either slowed down or completely interrupted.

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Safety and security measures to take when setting up a web blog

Dont hand out personal information about your family, address, numbers etc. Remember when youre in chat rooms that people who say they are a 14 year old girl from Manchester may be a 50 year old man from Belfast. If you feel like youre being harassed or annoyed online or if anything seems odd contact your service provider. Always keep up with updates WordPress updates are not just released for the Google News search results. They are released to fix bugs, introduce new features, or, most importantly, to patch security holes. Control sensitive information And when you are doing that cleanup of your file structure, check to make sure you are not leaving bits of valuable information available for all the world to see. For example, the readme.html file by default will say what version of WordPress youre running. If youre running an older version of WordPress with a known security hole, hackers will find you. Delete the admin username: Hackers look for blogs that use the default WordPress admin username because its half of the information they need to gain entry to your blog. When you use Admin as your username, you save the hacker a lot of time. All theyd need to do next is to figure out your password. Once that happens, they can enter your blog and do whatever they want.

Peter Greer

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Security of data being transferred

More and more business is being conducted on the internet these days, with even the smallest of businesses likely to have some kind of web presence. The web is a great arena for businesses, especially smaller outfits, to operate in. The costs are low and its relatively easy to build up a strong online presence. But conducting business online does have its dangers, especially given the number of threats posed by cyber criminals these days. This is most important when it comes to transferring sensitive data across the web. Whether its sending contracts or receipts via email, or transferrin g sensitive financial information, protecting data that is being sent via the web is vital. So, what can you do to protect it? Email Email is almost as old as the internet itself, and for a long time the security features on email services were rather outdated and easy to penetrate. Things have improved dramatically over the years, but there are still measures you can take to boost email security if you are sending sensitive information in this way. When you come to log in to your web based email, make sure it is via an HTTPS address which shows that your email account is encrypted and, therefore, secure. It is also a good idea to encrypt an email itself, to ensure it is protected when it is being sent. This can be done through methods such as PGP encryption or a Symantec Digital ID for Secure Email, which gives you an encryption key for an email.

Peter Greer

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Legislation
Legislation (or "statutory law") is law which has been promulgated (or "enacted") by a legislature or other governing body, or the process of making it. (Another source of law is judge-made law or case law.) Before an item of legislation becomes law it may be known as a bill, and may be broadly referred to as "legislation" while it remains under consideration to distinguish it from other business. Legislation can have many purposes: to regulate, to authorize, to proscribe, and to provide (funds), to sanction, to grant, to declare or to restrict. Under the Westminster system, an item of primary legislation is known as an Act of Parliament after enactment. Legislation is usually proposed by a member of the legislature (e.g. a member of Congress or Parliament), or by the executive, whereupon it is debated by members of the legislature and is often amended before passage. Most large legislatures enact only a small fraction of the bills proposed in a given session.[1] Whether a given bill will be proposed and enter into force is generally a matter of the legislative priorities of government. Legislation is regarded as one of the three main functions of government, which are often distinguished under the doctrine of the separation of powers. Those who have the formal power to create legislation are known as legislators; a judicial branch of government will have the formal power to interpret legislation (see statutory interpretation); the executive branch of government can act only within the powers and limits set by the law.

Peter Greer

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