Security Is a Major Problem with the Internet - Essay Example

This fools people into giving their personal information to these hackers. These hackers use this information for financial theft, identity loss, and fraud. (Russel Kay, 2004) Symantec has seen 87963, which is a 167 percent increase, in phishing hosts in just the last six months of 2007. (Business Standard, 2008) This increase also proves how security is a major problem of the internet. The only way phishing can be avoided is to understand the occurrence of this and think before giving out your password and other personal information online.

You can also check the reliability of the source of the website. A Computer virus is a program that replaces itself or attaches itself to other programs in an individual's computer without the knowledge of the owner. These infect the computer in different ways. Sometimes viruses are not noticeable while sometimes they can destroy the hard drive. Worms are something similar to a virus. It is a program that usually proliferates through network connections. It needs a host program, otherwise, it would not be able to function.

(Markus Hanhisalo) In 2003, $55 billion was spent on the cost of computer viruses by businesses. (Cyberoam, 2004) There are different anti-viruses nowadays that deal with all sorts of viruses. Installing these antiviruses onto your computer can help you detect and delete the virus before it spreads and destroys the PC. Email is the cheapest way to pass a message to many people at the same time. Spam unwanted emails that come into your email inbox which you refer to as junk mail. This mail usually promotes products and sometimes even ask for personal information, for example, credit card number, etc.

, in the email. These emails were only a nuisance but now viruses are spread through this and phishing is also becoming common because of this. The statistics show that spam is increasing. According to a source, 92.3 percent of emails sent in the first three months of 2008 were all spam and 23300 spam-related websites are discovered every day. (Robert Jaques, 2008) This is why spam is becoming a major problem for internet security. Spywares are programs that are installed onto one's computer without his permission.