In todays' online society we are faced with the same threats as we are offline with people trying to steal our identities and tap into our personal lives. When in the real world, we take steps towards maintaining our privacy by implementing such things as pin numbers, passwords, watermarks and various other options available to maintain authenticity. On the internet; is handling business and personal communications really
safe?

Many people are led to believe that purchasing a PC and connecting to the internet is the best and most secure way to handle your bills, communications, and shopping, well it can be, but what are the risks? They have successfully prevented most types of identity theft in the real world. One difference in the online attacks are the fact that we do not have the capabilities to actually see the person we are doing business or communicating with. How can we avoid them seeing us and how do we know if their businesses are legit? In this article, I'd like to point out some key points in the potential risks from being connected to the internet and the attacks malicious people mastermind every day. I will also highlight a few proven steps you can follow to prevent malicious attacks and keep your family and friends safe.

Understanding Internet Attacks:

Malicious entities;

Usually these are people who are technically able to program or use readily available programs to initiate their attack on you. They range from the so called scriptkiddies to more advanced personalities.

The reason for their attacks are usually but NOT nearly limited to:

1. Advertising - Usually done by installing what is called an adware program. It's such software that is put on your harddrive and is potentially dangerous as well as causing annoying pop-up ads (mini webpages) to appear on your desktop every five minutes or so.

2. Self interest - They've found out how to make this little program, now they want to see how many people will fall for it.

3. Profit - If they are successful they can steal your identity and thus any account information they choose or make profit through the traffic drawn to their pop-up ads as stated in item one. All of this is done, nonetheless, without your consent.

Malware or Scumware;

Stands for Malicious Software that is created to obtain, manipulate or mutilate your computer data and interfere with processing which makes your computer "lag" or perform poorly. It is usually the result of a download or contracted through non-secured ports/services.

1.They develop these programs to spread rapidly and can be transmitted to the computers of co-workers, family and even friends.

2.These "virii" are virtually impossible to detect without the right software and are damaging to your data. When you scan or use other means of finding the virus you will see that they go by many subnames. Two popular ones you may be familiar with are worms and trojans.

3. If gone untreated or not taken care of in a timely manner your computer could be looking at being used as a base to attack other computers or execute denial of service attacks for example.

Port scanners and packet sniffers;

can attack your computer as soon as you logon to your ISP. This attack occurs without even visiting a website or downloading anything. This can be prevented by making sure that your traffic is encrypted, not running unsecure services and have unnecessary ports open for example.

Tunneling:

Access;

When you access your internet service provider you are connecting to their servers via a network connection. To keep track of your internet account they have given you an Internet Protocol (IP) address. So, your IP address identifies you on their networks but what else does this mean?

It also means that the other connections you make, for example, to games or websites (which are run on servers) must also identify you somehow. They pick up your internet address virtually the same way your ISP
did. If a malicious person is the owner of a server they can directly upload harmful files into your computer using malicious software described above. Your IP address tells them where you stand on the World Wide Web and can lead them to accessing your computer and installing for example malicious software that gives them access to your data. Therefore, any accounts, addresses, family identity, pin numbers, passwords, and phone numbers are at risk.

SSH & VPN Tunneling;

The VPN (Virtual Private Network) or SSH (Secure Shell) connection you have made to our secure servers is designed to put up a "wall" between you and anyone else on the internet. If your data is unencrypted then
malicious entities may attack you by tapping into your live connection with a program and this leads from one evil to another. This program (there are thousands) can have other options that will crash your PC and turn your computer into a giant paper weight, allow them to record personal information without your consent, and cause annoying pop-ups to appear while you are visiting websites. Please note that this is only a simplified explaination and there are many more ways and advanced methods to wreak havoc.

By encrypting your data, hide your IP address and all the data sent to our secure servers you connect with during your journey online, you remain private and increase your anonymity. Your ISP is like a public road, they will not escort you through all the potential dangers on the internet despite that most provide some kind of support. We at Trilightzone.org offer special services to make sure you can experience the internet at its best but without being a sitting duck.

SSL Webmail;

You can't rely on your ISP to secure your email with all the attacks occuring these days, which brings me to my next point. Emails are becoming the most used line of communication as there is no long distance charges nor serious delays.

Are you tired of spam mail?

Some website owners are using programs and various scripting methods to trace your online activites, read your instant messages, even private e-mails. They collect personal data about you, your personal business, or even your family; they add you to a mailing list and when they have enough names they will sell the list to various companies (most likely run by malicious people). Most ISP's don't bother with adding more security to your email accounts. Many don't use SSL to secure sending and receiving your email. By not doing that they allow others on the same network to snif your traffic which consists of data and even passwords. Also they don't hide your real IP when sending out your email. Many more critical parts can be mentioned here but I think it's clear enough by
now.

Using our Secure Mail service at trilightzone.org you can rest assured that all your communication is SSL secured, your IP is not shown to the recipient, your mail is stored on encrypted drives and in case of ease or travel we have also SSL secured webmail for you.

We also use special programs which will scan all email for a possible virus, trojan, worm and other malicious code. Another program will also scan for spam and tag it as spam using advanced intelligence.

Be weary in the emails you open and NEVER download any attachments unless you are positive who the sender is and why there is an attachments involved at all !

Our other Services:

Feel free to contact us about our other services. Let us know if you are in need of something or advise. Perhaps you want to host your website but make sure you can do this without revealing your identity to everyone or avoid issues from hosting it in your country.

Instead of using the newsgroups access of your ISP you might want to use ours combined with our tunneling products. Making sure that your ISP and other entities don't intrude your life and sell it as marketing data to the highest bidders !

On a final note...

Anonymity;

is the use of no name or identifying data like when you are posting in forums, bulletins, or simply publishing on the web. Think also of people wanting to use their Freedom of Speech but are afraid to reveal their identity to everyone. Protect yourself and everyone involved, make sure no one can abuse your data, damage your credit history, commit crimes using your identity...

Or just to use your Right on Privacy !

We wrote a comprehensive article with facts and fiction after we've analysed many other privacy providers. If you can spare a bit of time then we believe you'll be happy to read this article to understand the difference between us and many others.