Every day you share personal information about yourself with others. It's so routine that you may not even realize you're doing it. You may write a check at the grocery store, charge tickets to a ball game, rent a car, mail your tax returns, buy a gift online, call home on your cell phone, schedule a doctor's appointment or apply for a credit card. Each transaction requires you to share personal information: your bank and credit card account numbers; your income; your Social Security number (SSN); or your name, address and phone numbers.
It's important to find out what happens to the personal information you and your children provide to companies, marketers and government agencies. These organizations may use your information simply to process your order; to tell you about products, services, or promotions; or to share with others.
And then there are unscrupulous individuals, like identity thieves, who want your information to commit fraud. Identity theft - the fastest-growing white-collar crime in America - occurs when someone steals your personal identifying information, like your SSN, birth date or mother's maiden name, to open new charge accounts, order merchandise or borrow money. Consumers targeted by identity thieves usually don't know they've been victimized. But when the fraudsters fail to pay the bills or repay the loans, collection agencies begin pursuing the consumers to cover debts they didn't even know they had.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) encourages you to make sure your transactions — online and off — are secure and your personal information is protected. The FTC offers these tips to help you manage your personal information wisely, and to help minimize its misuse.
-Before you reveal any personally identifying information, find out how it will be used and whether it will be shared with others. Ask about company's privacy policy: Will you have a choice about the use of your information; can you choose to have it kept confidential?
-Read the privacy policy on any website directed to children. Websites directed to children or that knowingly collect information from kids under 13 must post a notice of their information collection practices.
-Put passwords on your all your accounts, including your credit card account, and your bank and phone accounts. Avoid using easily available information — like your mother's maiden name, your birth date, the last four digits of your SSN or your phone number — or obvious choices, like a series of consecutive numbers or your hometown football team.
-Minimize the identification information and the number of cards you carry to what you'll actually need. Don't put all your identifying information in one holder in your purse, briefcase or backpack.
-Keep items with personal information in a safe place. When you discard receipts, copies of credit applications, insurance forms, physician statements, bank checks and statements, expired charge cards, credit offers you get in the mail and mailing labels from magazines, tear or shred them. That will help thwart any identity thief who may pick through your trash or recycling bins to capture your personal information.
-Consider ordering a copy of your credit report from each of the three major credit reporting agencies (CRAs) every year. Make sure it's accurate and includes only those activities you've authorized. CRAs can't charge you more than $9.00 for a copy and in some states, your credit report is free.
-Use a secure browser when shopping online to guard the security of your transactions. When submitting your purchase information, look for the "lock" icon on the browser's status bar to be sure your information is secure during transmission.
Protecting Important Data and Personal Information from Loss by Backing it Up Dear customerValuable data must be backed up regularly to prevent data loss due to hard disk Crashes, accidental or malicious hackers, viruses, or unexpected data corruption. Examples of data that is stored on your local hard disk:
Outlook Personal Folders, Personal Address Books.
My Documents (MS Office documents in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, pictures, etc.).
E-Forms.
Please follow one or more of the steps below to ensure that your data is safe and can be restored in case of emergency:
If you place data on your home directory on a file server such as Exchange Server, departmental file server, etc., it is automatically backed up. Note that if the document is left open by an application such as Word or Outlook during the nightly backups, it will not be backed up and therefore it is recommended that all applications should be closed when leaving the office for the day.
Use an external back-up media such as floppy disk, Pen drives, USB hard disks, CDs, DVDs, etc.
Use an additional internal hard disk.
Backing up data to another workstation’s hard drive through Windows folder sharing.Please note that it is also recommended to regularly check the media on which backup is taking place to ensure that the media is in good condition and that all the data is actually there.
How to Backup Your Data
Click Start, point to All Programs, point to Accessories, point to System Tools, and then click Backup. The Backup or Restore Wizard starts.
Click Advanced Mode.
Click the Backup tab.
On the Job menu, click New.
Click to select the check boxes for the drives that you want to back up. If you want to be more specific in your selections, expand the drive that you want, and then click to select the check boxes for the files or folders that you want.
Click to select the System State check box.Note If you want to back up your system settings and your data files, back up all the data on your computer plus the System State data. The System State data includes such things as the registry, the COM+ class registration database, files under Windows File Protection, and boot files.
In the Backup destination list, click the backup destination that you want to use.
If you clicked File in the previous step, type the full path and file name that you want in the Backup media or file name box. You can also specify a network share as a destination for the backup file.
Click Start Backup. The Backup Job Information dialog box appears.
Under If the media already contains backups, use one of the following steps: • If you want to append this backup to previous backups, click Append this backup to the media.• If you want to overwrite previous backups with this backup, click Replace the data on the media with this backup.
Click Advanced.
Select the Verify data after backup check box.
In the Backup Type box, click the type of backup that you want. When you click a backup type, a description of that backup type appears under "Description."
Click OK, and then click Start Backup. A Backup Progress dialog box appears, and the backup starts.
When the backup is complete, click Close.Watch a Video TrainingYou may watch a Video clip detailing the above procedure on Microsoft Web Site. Click the link below http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308422/en-us
Protecting the Home Workstation from new Virus Attacks New viruses are continuously being released over the Internet. If you are already regularly patching and protecting your home machine against the latest viruses, then please disregard this document. Please note that infected workstations will cause slow network and browsing performance on Home Internet services. Please follow the three steps below to patch and clean your home PC:
Please visit the Microsoft Windows Update website to install the “critical updates”: http://v4.windowsupdate.microsoft.com/en/default.asp .(this could take some time over the dialup network; you can let it run overnight)
Please visit the following McAfee link to download the STINGER utility to clean any viruses: http://us.mcafee.com/virusInfo/default.asp?id=stinger .
Please visit the following link to get the latest McAfee antivirus DAT file updates (or visit the website of your antivirus software manufacturer): http://www.nai.com/us/downloads/updates/dat_download.asp
It is recommended to have anti-virus software installed on any PC connected to the Home Internet network (dialup or ADSL). For more information and downloads about McAfee virus protection software. Failure to protect your home PC could result in infection and slow network and browsing performance for all Home Internet customers. I appreciate your efforts to secure the Home Internet network.
With regards,
Saboor Adem
IT Support
Saudi Aramco