Don’t ever consider the Internet as a safe network!

Some people think of the Internet as a trustworthy channel over which they can safely relay their private information. Sadly, this is far from being true.

The Internet is a transparent network that uses little or no data encryption, meaning the data that you send or receive through email, Instant Messaging, and other conventional channels can easily be accessed and viewed in its original form by intermediary parties or your ISP. So it’s a risk place, even without hackers and other malicious individuals probing for vulnerable PCs and valuable data.

So it’s important to distinguish between what you should and should not send over the Internet. The information you enter into your Facebook profile, for example, is not encrypted so, no matter how hard you try to mask your profile or messages you exchange with other users, they can still be intercepted and viewed by unauthorized people. On the other hand, Google’s mail service encrypts all messages, so they can’t be read while in transit – unauthorized interceptors would see only apparently garbled information. But even then, you shouldn’t rely on Google mail to be completely secure – the encryption doesn’t happen until you hit the Send button, so a keylogger that had already gotten onto your PC could capture the message content as you type it.