Standpoint

Email Hacking

 

How sure are we that no other people can read our emails? Of course, with the existence and continuously improving technology, it is very possible.

Any one of us could be a target of cyber hijacking and identity theft thus steal money or sensitive information.

A blogger could be bold about his personal information, whereabouts and insights written on his blog site or posts. A classic example that his personal security and privacy could have been neglected, intentionally or unintentionally. He could be an easy target.

Yesterday, I attended a 4-hour seminar organized by Peace and Conflict Journalism Network (Pecojon).

Since journalists can become targets of attacks in cyberspace as we receive sensitive information aiding our reportage, it is for this reason that PECOJON engages with Tactical Tech.

Well, Tactical Tech is an international non-government organization empowering groups to utilize information technology as an asset to bring about progress and one of their advocacy is internet security.

It was a short but fully-loaded seminar.  And I want to share to you some of the pointers I learned from that activity.

One, wise choice of Internet tools. It is not to promote, but Tactical Tech recommended the use of Fire Fox because you can add plug-ins and extensions for additional security on your browsing.

Second, for secure and encrypted browsing, especially when you’re sharing server or free Wi-Fi, always use HTTPS://, not just HTTP when surfing sites. HTTPS or Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure is a Firefox extension.

Third, there are sites with programs that could make you anonymous on the internet or private browsing and you can download it for free.

In that seminar, the speaker actually demonstrated that he can read my email messages on his laptop without giving him my username and password and we just shared same server.

Is it that scary?

11 Comments

  • Miss Sara

    ANY time I'm using wifi, which is very minimal.. even if my settings are "secure" I'm nervous. Nothing on the internet, ever is private… just creepy!

  • Cacai M.

    yes, that is very scary! I have an idea with that how they do it, either with script, or yeah same server, or cookies/programs that we downloaded and I guess I have more a lot to learn too about many more of this. It is really scary, indeed!

    Am curious about this https/ . What i like with firefox too is that it has MySQL (not so sure with its term) or such that you will know if it is verified or not.

    • dothy

      https is a secured version of http. Firefox displays a message that the site is encrypted informing if you want to add exception and include the site to the list of trusted sites. 🙂

  • lovinangels

    Yeah. As smart as computers are, there will also be people that are smarter.

    I stopped by for Thirsty Thursday, and am following you…love a follow back!

  • Dothy

    We should also be cautious of the links provided before clicking, especially those shortened urls. These shorten urls might be a phishing site or might cause our computers to be affected by a virus or passwords compromised.

  • J Allyssa

    Oh, kaya pala when you choose to secure your Facebook connection, nagiging https:// ang URL insead of http://. Thanks Mommy Divine, very informative post. I didn’t have any idea na pwede palang i-secure din yung connection when browsing different sites. 

  • Steve del Castillo

    That is alarming! that is why i always change password now and then to make sure my email is safe form hackers!

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