A Secure Proxy Server Will Protect Against Identity Theft

It's true using a secure proxy server is one of the biggest steps you can take in securing your details online and protecting yourself from the growing scourge of identity theft. 

There are many, many people involved in identity theft, huge criminal gangs with lots of resources have slowly discovered this form of electronic theft.   The rewards are huge and to be honest the risks are minimal compared with conventional crime. These groups set themselves up in countries with ineffective police and information laws and actively target internet users and their accounts.   This is big business, the rewards for these gangs are phenomenal.   The rewards of course attract many more criminals in countries across the globe. A rather nasty side affect of the communication revolution that is the internet - you no longer have to be in the same country as your victim to steal from someone. Lots of us put our personal details up on the internet, you can easily pull together a lot of information on a person from social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and Myspace.  A few more tricks and a little more snooping and your very online identity is at risk. 

One of the main issues is with your browsing - 99% happens in clear text, that's everything you send from your PC across the web is all readable without any special skills,  you just need to intercept it. There are numerous places your data can be intercepted  - your local ISP stores logs containing full details of everything people do online. There are numerous other places it can be intercepted but some are easier than others.   The easiest is quite simple to do and what most identity thieves do - they rent, buy or just hack into and steal a server.  

Next the identity thieves install a proxy server and advertise it on the net as a free anonymous proxy.  Pretty soon thousands of people will be directing all their personal data via this server. The proxy is switched to caching mode or logging enabled and a huge stock of personal data, your personal data is copied. Account names, web sites, personal details, logins and just abut everything an identity thief needs.   They will impersonate people, steal directly from individuals or even blackmail surfers if they've reason to. Thousands of options, thousands of victims and all this came directly to them via a free anonymous proxy. 

You don't get anything for free, a secure proxy server can be used with an encrypted connection to protect your data, anonymity and personal details. But they cost money to run and set up securely so choose wisely and never, ever send your data via a free proxy unless you know who is running it.