Safely Surf the Web

The web is a ruthless place full of Trolls, Crackers, and Phishers, Much like the Doom sayers, Burglars, and snake oil sales men of past generations. It is important to be able to take some basic steps to secure yourself from the dangers of the web. One way that you can protect yourself is by checking whether a website is a reputable source, and if not use some simple factors to help determine if you can trust the site. Here is a simple list of Do's and Don'ts

Don'ts:

#1 Don't judge a site based on how professional it looks
#2 Don't Trust sites proclaiming get rich schemes
#3 Don't use the same password
#4 Don't trust what a link might say, double check the address

Do's:
#1 Do a whois query on suspicious sites
#2 Do look for “ https:// ” on login pages
#3 Do use different passwords
#4 Do-uble check the url isn't weird. (e.g. g00gl3.com)
#5 Do use Anti-virus on downloads

Many phishing sites will look exactly the same as an accepted site, make sure to double check what the address is; links and mistyping an address can send you to a phishing site. There are many scam sites that may look professional but will steal your information, or provide you with false information much like malepregnancy.com , If you don't believe me take a look at this Urbanlegends .

When you register for a site often they will often request your email address for use as a user-name, while helpful for remembering your login, if you use the same password to access your email account the people who you are registering with will be able to see your password in plain text.*(this is not always the case, but you will have no way of knowing this)

All domains that are on the net need to be registered. A whois query is a request from a whois server for access to the records. You don't need to use an official whois server such as www.arin.net; a site like www.easywhois.com will point you in the right direction.

If you decide to download that New free piece of software, make sure you are getting it from a reputable site, and if not trust your anti-virus when it tells you it is a Trojan. It will save you a whole lot of trouble in the long run.