This season, unprecedented numbers of online transactions and communications will take place, as people buy presents, send out holiday letters via e-mail, contact old friends, and just generally spend time on the internet. All of which makes it a prime time for digital scammers to take advantage of unsuspecting victims. But with a few simple precautions, the average internet user can protect herself from the run-of-the-mill online predator.

The most direct method for someone who wants to gain access to your multitude of personal information- user names, passwords, account numbers, address book listings and such- to get to you is by e-mail. If these scammers can get you to open their e-mail messages, they are halfway to reaching their goal. So these messages will, like their hard-copy paper counterparts in your snail-mailbox, try several and varied techniques to get you to open them. They may have very official-looking return addresses. They may promise desireable rewards if you'll just open them up. They may pretend to be from a trusted friend or business.

Unlike the junk mail delivered by the postal service, however, the very act of opening a malicious e-mail can provide information to the person who sent it. When snail-mail is sent, the sender doesn't know what happens to it, unless you actually respond. When an e-mail is sent, the sender can monitor if and when it was opened. And the very fact that it was opened indicates that the e-mail address is a valid one, and that someone is on the other end of it. It tells the sender that the message did not get stopped by a spam filter, and that if another message could be worded just right, it might get a response.

So, the first internet security tip to keep in mind is, Don't open e-mails from unknown sources. An unexpected e-mail should be treated as a threat.

But we've already established that an e-mail scammer might make his message appear to be from someone you know- a friend, an associate, or a company with which you do business. So once you've clicked on the message to open it, there is still one major step you can take to help keep your computer and your information safe. 

This second internet security tip is, Don't click on a link. Any link should be treated as a threat.

The e-mail might appear to be from your bank, your internet service provider or some other company, and say that it needs to update some information, and all you need to do is to follow the link they have provided. It might appear to be from a company with which you have done business in the past, and they are inviting you to take a short survey. It might appear to be from a friend who says they've taken or found some pictures that you'd like, just click here to see them.

But just don't. At this point, all reputable and legitimate businesses will ask you not to click on a link, but instead, to type the URL of their website into your browser, so that you can be assured that you are actually visiting their site, instead of clicking on a link that might appear to be to their site, while actually directing you somewhere else. As for your friends, is there anything in the message to convince you that it is actually from someone you know? Or it is instead a generic note that really could have been written by anyone trying to get you to click on a malicious link? And even if everything else seems okay, you should still get into the habit of manually typing the link into your browser. It may take a few seconds longer than just clicking a link, but it goes a long way toward making your online experience safer.

Finally, a few extra precautions include:

-Using anti-virus software, and updating it daily,
-Performing a full scan of your system on a regular basis with anti-virus software, and
-Using anti-spyware software to rid your system of spyware.

To sum it up, be wary of all e-mail. Discard suspicious e-mails unopened. Don't click on links in any e-mail. And protect your system with the available software designed to do so.