The Devious Internet Predators

There are many devious Internet predators lurking about the Internet in search of prey. You'll find these culprits all over the place invading all facets of the Internet. They disguise themselves as children, pretty women, professionals, or in most cases, completely anonymous. They are looking for your personal information. They want usernames, passwords, social security numbers, banking information, credit card information, whatever they can score that will be beneficial to their cause.

The reason so many of these scammers are out there, is because so many are falling for their scams. They get more creative every day with ways to steal from people. Identity theft is more prevalent today than it ever has been because it's become so easy. They don't have to see you, talk to you, or even know you to steal from you. They just have to trick you into clicking an innocent link, logging into a site you believe you log into every day, buying something from a professional looking site, etc.

Just yesterday, on MySpace, I saw a bulletin from one of my "Friends" that had a link to a website that will "Help You Track Your Page".. It requested that you log into their system with your MySpace ID and password and it would begin tracking your page for you. This little site even had a link to let you know that they aren't "phishing" for information. "Phishing" is a term used when someone is attempting to gain your information by "fishing" or throwing out bait and seeing which "fish" will bite.

How can we prevent this from happening to us? I'm not sure that there is a way to prevent this from happening to us completely because this is the computer age. Everything resides in databases from the time we're born. Something I didn't realize until not too long ago is that you don't receive a birth certificate for your children any longer at the hospital. You have to send off for a copy.

"That makes it easier to obtain a copy of the birth certificate should you lose it", she says.