It’s that time of year when online purchases peak and many people are working with their financial advisers to review the past year and plan for the coming one. The Internet has become a convenient and standard tool for exchanging financial information, and email is now a staple in this online exchange of information. Unfortunately, email is routinely targeted by online scammers, hackers and identity thieves snooping for financial information.

Becoming aware of these online threats is the first step toward reducing your risks online. According to Identity Theft Fixes, each year approximately 10 million Americans become victims to identity theft. Of these individuals, an average of $1,800 to $14,000 is lost. Moreover, victims spend an average of 840 to 1,300 hours each year to resolve identity theft issues with their credit report and personal information.

Here are five steps you can take to help ensure your financial information is protected:

1) Keep security software active and up-to-date. Anti-virus, anti-spyware and firewall protection can only combat new threats if the software is current. Set your security software to update automatically, and periodically scan your computer for viruses and spyware.

2) Make sure your OS and Web browser are current. Operating system companies issue security patches to repair flaws in their systems. Set your operating system and Web browser to automatically download and install these critical security patches.

3) Use private email to protect your information. Common email is exposed to spam, identity theft, and phishing scams to name a few. Using a private email service like PrivacyHarbor.com to send private and secure email ensures that your information is kept safe.

4) Password-protect your financial information. If you keep financial information stored on an electronic device, be sure to password-protect the information in case of theft. Do not store the passwords in the laptop or device.

5) Back-up your information. When you have important financial information stored on your computer, be sure to store the information externally on a flash drive, removable disk or external hard drive.

Taking proactive steps to protect your financial information will ensure a safer online experience. Contact us to learn more about how PrivacyHarbor.com can help protect your personal information during this busy financial season and secure it throughout the new year.

On the surface, spam, viruses, identity theft, malware and a host of other things people expose themselves to on the Internet are a huge problem. These are all just a means to a profit for some, but the problem is not the fact that businesses profit on the Internet but how businesses profit on the Internet. At the heart of the problem are businesses and the user data they collect and rely on. Today, these new successful businesses are referred to as “Web 2.0 companies” because of all the new innovations that they are making. But it’s not the new innovations and new ways of interacting that are problematic; it is what businesses are doing behind the scenes with user data to earn their bread and butter.

Web 2.0 companies like Google are not there to serve their users. Their real clients are advertisers. Most of the successful businesses out there have discovered that personal data gathered on the web is worth something and people are willing to throw it away in exchange for access to fun social websites, mash-ups and other web 2.0 technologies. When Google was getting started and began collecting user data, they were aware of how much the data they had was worth and the potential for a public backlash against them for collecting it. Because of this, they were careful and cautious in the beginning. However, as time went on, they were more confident in their position and became more and more invasive in the collection of user data. And now, it is so bad that in many cases they even make the user’s ability to access their own data difficult. Recently, a website put out by an engineering team at Google is claiming to try and reverse that image. But are they really?

They are advocating and advertising an engineering effort to make it easier for users to move data in, as well as out of Google products, to and from competing products. The irony is that “moving data out” does not mean removing it from Google. Google still retains all data that crosses their systems. This is just more of the same effort to collect and utilize more data by encouraging users to migrate data from competing services. This is data that they otherwise wouldn’t have access to.

Is it acceptable for companies like Google and others to get their hands further and further into our own personal lives and track everything we do? Take Google maps for instance. How do you feel about the fact that Google maps has pictures of everyone they drive by on the street and possibly your picture without their or your knowledge? Do you think Google’s new PR website, DataLiberation.org will help you find the picture of yourself and not just download the copy but also help you remove it from Google’s clutches? No.

How can we get out of the Google trap? Sometimes it’s hard to avoid. The speed of life forces us to compromise by using some of these freely available services out of convenience. To combat this, as you find companies and services that don’t subscribe to an advertising model, promote them. Anytime you come across a web company that is actually servicing their users and customers, promote them by sharing them with others. Share them with your friends and family. Share them with strangers by blogging about them or talking about them here, or anywhere else that people are listening for change. That is what it is going to take to fix the heart of the problem.

About twenty years ago a data service – I forget which one – offered a set of compact disks for sale. It contained the names, phone numbers, addresses and demographic data for everyone in the United States. The product launch was drowned out by the howls of outrage from journalists and Congress. It was an unthinkable violation of privacy. It was Orwellian. The venture sank without a trace. For a while.

Ten years later David Brin wrote The Transparent Society making the case that secrets would soon be impossible to keep and that we shouldn’t even try. The Information Age would usher in an era where everyone’s life was on display. Governments would be models of transparency and openness. Corporations would throw open their records or pay through the nose for the privilege of keeping a few vital things confidential for a limited time. Privacy would be an outdated concept. A decade down the line he seems to be batting .500. While business and government have an increasingly broad view of what they can hide from the public the lives of the Little People are on display to an extent that would have been unthinkable just a few decades ago.

Today? Ah, today is not at all like yesterday. We take it for granted that a few minutes or a few seconds plus a few dollars can extract anyone’s picture, phone numbers and address not to mention the most personal details of his or her life. People sign up for services which tell everyone in the world exactly where they are at all times. Friends of mine with Military Intelligence backgrounds describe how they used to agonize over photos in wallets, matchbooks and brands of cologne to try and piece together the outlines of a target’s contacts and associations. Today their subjects spend hours doing the work themselves with Facebook. Targeted advertising works so well that it’s killing traditional venues like printed newspapers. Twitter and Hotmail are free for the user because they are worth serious money to the real customers – advertisers.

In the last day or so I came across two very interesting takes on how much the world has changed. The BBC’s World Have Your Say featured a spirited worldwide discussion, also available as a downloadable podcast on how transparent our lives should be. My favorite security expert, the brilliant and very readable Bruce Schneier, wrote an excellent piece in the Japan Times. When you exchange information online it stays. Most data you think are private are only that way until someone else decides it’s worth something to share or sell them.

It’s not something most of us think about. We use credit cards. We tweet about whatever comes into our head and broadcast it. But it is very serious business which can have profound repercussions years later. The information we put out for the world to see is worth money to others. We should think about whether it’s worth something to us, how much we should value what we currently give away for free.