When you explore the internet, visiting many websites that you can find and enjoying your time, don’t forget that there are lots of third parties that are trying to accumulate your browsing data. Your online activity is keep being monitored by the government and ISP, and you need to understand how to prevent that from happening. VPN can be a great way to ensure that you have the best online experience that is free from any type of tracking and monitoring as it is done by various third parties.
On top of that, you need to understand that there are lots of possible threats that you might encounter during your online activity. These threats usually try to find the vulnerability in your system, especially your network connection. Once they’ve found the vulnerability in your system, they will try to infiltrate your system and do various harms on your system. They can also be very harmful for your online privacy, and you need to be aware that they can enter your system when you least expect it. Here are 5 types of malicious threats that can be dangerous for your online privacy:
1. Phishing Websites
This is one of the most common threats that people are coming across when they browse the internet, and with this threat, many people are losing their important data, such as username and password to their online accounts. Phishing websites are used by unscrupulous people to trick you into believing that you are visiting a legitimate website while you are actually visiting a fake website. Since you think that the website is legitimate, you will not be hesitant in putting your username and password into the box provided on the website. Then, instead of being logged into your account, your username and password get stolen by the owner of the phishing website.
2. Auto Malware Download
Sometimes, when you visit shady websites, such as websites that are offering illegal movies or software downloads, you will get some pop-ups on your browser, and suddenly the browser is downloading a suspicious file automatically. Since you might think that it is the file that you are looking for, you might click on that downloaded file only to find out later that your system is being bombarded by the malware and viruses after you install the suspicious file. This is also a common threat that you find online, and the repercussion of being the victim of this threat is that you might lose the important data that you have stored on your computer in just a few minutes.
3. Network Monitoring
When you are trying to connect to the internet using a free Wi-Fi hotspot in order to save some bandwidth from your internet provider, some hackers might install a type of network monitoring tool to monitor your browsing activity. This is possible since unprotected or free Wi-Fi hotspot doesn’t have any good security installed on it. People simply use it for free as a way to pass the time, and without realizing it, they might lose their private data due to some hackers monitoring their browsing activity. It means they can monitor the websites that you visit, the passwords that you type, and so on.
4. Malicious Advertising
Malicious advertising is not just the regular advertising that you might find on the internet since this type of advertising can’t be controlled. It means that once you’ve installed the malicious advertising software from various sources, the advertising will keep popping up on your screen regardless of whether you want it or not. You can’t turn this off, and sometimes, it can’t be turned off even if you uninstall the software. Not only displaying unwanted ads, the malicious advertising will also collect your private data and send it to their own servers, giving a huge privacy risk for you.
5. Keylogger Spyware
Keylogger spyware is a type of malicious threat that is designed to spy on your computing activity. It’s not just your online activity, but your overall computing activity. It logs the keyboard that you use and monitor whatever you are typing on your computer. It can be installed in various ways, including by downloading illegal software, clicking on malicious links, and so on. Once installed, whatever you type on your device will be logged and sent to the hackers that made the spyware. They will know what passwords that you type, websites that you visit, communications that you make, and many other personal information that is revealed just from your regular computing activity.
Those are the types of malicious threats that can be dangerous for your online privacy. Once you understand about the danger of these online threats, you need to protect yourself from them as soon as possible. VPN is one of the best security and privacy tools that you can use, which will help to protect your online privacy and security.