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Internet is a blessing, no doubt! I am among the biggest beneficiaries of the internet revolution. I work online. I shop online. I bank online. I blog online. I even met my husband online :). So, there is no bigger fan of the www than yours truly. But, with online presence and the open nature of the net, come many perils that we might not even be aware of or watchful of. Due to the ease of creating email accounts and blogs, everyone is on board these days. Even my son is there, but I monitor his emails, and I have instructed him not to give out any personal information without checking with me. Hacking has become commonplace. You can suddenly find your email account or social media accounts hacked. It helps to change passwords regularly. Once your account is compromised, you may get blocked out of it and then you have to go through the roundabout route of contacting the provider and providing multiple identity proofs till your account is restored. Always have a backup email id as well. It helps in situations such as above.
Just yesterday, a professional website belonging to a travel agency was discovered to have completely gone blank. It is my sister’s travel website, http://travelplaza.biz that I helped design (with generous help thrown in by hubby), created and did content for from scratch. She called in panic, and on deeper investigation it was found that someone has left all the page files with blank files, in effect, leaving a blank website. The hosts are indiatimes.com, who were very sluggish in their response and were not much help. Luckily, I can’t thank him enough; I have a geek at home, my husband. He had kept a backup copy of the entire website in his system. That helped us put her site back up and running in just about 10 minutes. Another great help was google cache that helps you remember the exact webpage and how it looked especially when the site has undergone many modifications. It is another issue that the hosts are being pursued and suitably pulled up to see how this happened. And, other steps will be taken to go with more reliable hosts in the future.
This rang alarm bells in my head, and the first thing I did was backup my blog. Four years’ worth of my passion, it is worth more than what I can ever express in words. And, I will continue to take back ups so every month from now on. I’ve shared the link of how to backup your blog, if you are on blogger on my FB page. Here it is for those who don’t know:
http://www.labnol.org/internet/blogging/backup-your-blogger-blog/5984/
http://www.thriftcore.com/2011/05/how-to-back-up-your-blogger-blog-dont.html
For those on wordpress or self-hosted blogs, go to Tools –> Export. Click on all and you can get an XML file of your blog. Now just save this in a safe location. This is your blog’s backup till that date. Continue to take backups every month to keep the backup updated. In the event that your blog is lost, you can use this copy to restore your blog, comments et all. You must do so right away!
Also remember that if you are blocked out of your email for some reason, you will not be able to access your blog too. Backups will help you in such circumstances.
Email ids: Be very careful of what emails you open. Do not store your private passwords, bank account information etc. in your emails. They are notorious for getting hacked. I once had my old hotmail and yahoo accounts hacked and completely cleaned up. I lost all my old emails of my pre-gmail days losing some of my precious mails with hubby. Be careful of opening emails or links from unknown people. They will normally have very catchy headlines. Some malicious ones will release virus or code that can dangerously harm or wipe out your hard disk or setup code on your computer that can be used to spy on your activities.
Be careful of phishing sites too. Never ever open your known bank accounts, emails or social media accounts from the links given in mails. They will lead you to websites that look identical to the real ones, and once you key in your password and other details, they will be picked up by the predators. Always type in the URL for these websites. There is too much at stake here.
Never ever fall for the “You have won a million-dollar lottery scheme” mails. Tempting as they may seem, they are hoaxes. Please read these horrifying incidents about email lottery scams:
http://www.ndtv.com/article/south/four-nigerians-arrested-in-belgaum-for-e-mail-lottery-scams-248659
Online shopping is good and convenient. Be always careful before inputting your CC details. Make sure that there is a lock symbol at the bottom that shows that the transaction is protected from prying eyes. And, if you are very scared, go for COD (cash on delivery) options and avoid giving out your crucial details. Never give out your ATM pin, password, netpin or any other pins to any person on email, telephone or otherwise.
Install a good virus check on your system always. And if you want to store confidential data, try sites like Dropbox that give you a secure database of files. You can also password protect files if needed.
I hope these tips are of some help to you. Internet is very useful, but safeguards must be in place to utilize this global medium well. Scamsters and hackers are one step ahead and feed on our naivete, greed sometimes and plain laziness at other times. Stay safe and happy browsing :)!
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