After reading multiple articles (the latest titled ‘How I Stole Somone’s Identity’ where the author asked some of his acquaintances for permission to break into their online banking accounts via email hacking, found here) it appears that the internet is less than friendly place.

Even MORE so now that Mike Perry, a reverse engineer from San Francisco, announced his intention to release his Gmail Account Hacking Tool.

But the problem seems not that the internet is a less than friendly place, but that perhaps its a little TOO friendly! And after asking around it seems to be that people just aren’t AWARE of how easy it can be to break into your internet banking accounts. Read that article, you’ll see.

There are a couple basic things you can do to protect yourself, if you have a gmail account, change your settings to ‘Always use https’, which is a handy new feature Google have recently implemented. This will encrypt ALL of the data between you and Google’s mail server, instead of just the login handshake.

The second is be aware of how easy it is to guess your passwords – don’t create passwords that are can be easily guessed or discovered. Is your birthday on an internet networking site? Mentioned your pets name on your blog? Can I find out where you live from an old archived CV? The same goes for password retrieval questions.

When creating passwords or password retrieval questions, be smart. Use things only you would know, or things that can’t be found from your myspace page or the internet.

The last piece of advise is just be smart. Be wary of emails that appear to come from banks, credit card or other trusted companies, or that ask you to update your security information. Bin your spam; don’t believe promises of big profits, risk-free investments, easy credit, or valuable prizes. If an email offer sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

Be smart, and the internet won’t seem so bad. Promise!