You have an office or home where you might possibly have 1,2 or more computers. You have broadband, and now you need a wireless router to synch everything together. You are sharing personal and sensitive information as files through the file sharing, and printers, fax machines...how can you secure your data? How can you know for sure that your information will be secure even when you log onto websites and enter personal information?

The answer is simple, you can't. You will never know for sure 100% that nobody is gathering or stealing your sensitive data, but there are measures that you can take to drastically prevent this type of theft from ever happening:

1. Enable WPA2!! NEVER use WEP under any circumstances. It's algorithms are extremely weak and can be hacked within minutes. WPA has has a flaw if you are using short, weak passwords. Your password should always be 72 characters long of mumbo-jumbo(ex. h*kP,3@c).

2. Shut down your SSID broadcasting. This will hide your network to those who are looking for it, it will show nothing. This can be bypassed rather easily. However, the more fences one must hop the better.

3. Enable MAC filtering. This will only allow certain computers that have a specific MAC address to connect. This is easily the weakest security of them all, because all an individual needs to do is spoof his/her MAC address. But again, enable it anyway.

4. Invest in a small, affordable and easy-to-use VPN(Virtual Private Network). This will route your traffic elsewhere and will keep prying eyes off your data with 256-bit AES encryption(the strongest available).

5. Miscellaneous - Switch to a different channel if you suspect that someone is breaking in. Also enable your Firewall, disable remote management, and I would not recommend using DMZ(which opens up all ports for a specific IP address).

6. Finally, set a password for your router/VPN/modem. Simple but frustrating to those trying to break through. Again, very easy to bypass.

Many of these options I've listed here are simple to break through. The whole point is to put up as many road blocks as possible in order to perhaps frustrate anyone trying to break into your wireless network. The best defense is to not let anyone in to begin with. So, enable WPA2 and use the longest and strongest password you can. And invest in buying a VPN. I recommend taking a look at http://www.iphantom.com. Phantom gateways has a very easy-to-use, affordable and powerful VPN that even the simplest of computer users can figure out.

The best security is to switch to WPA2 by far. Get rid of WEP, it's security is almost as equal to nothing. And if you have information that needs to be kept secret, WPA2 is the best option by far.

This is a "Wireless Security for Dummies" guide and very simple, yet it is written that even the uneducated user can apply it to protect their data.

Began creating video with help from the Lord on May 10th 2007 and finished May 13th 2007.

This video is for all of our Soldiers serving in the Military in the United States.

Video link:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=...

Getting your passwords or information stolen can be a frustrating experience for any user of technology. But you ask the question to yourself "How? When? Why?". There are many ways this can happen, and many places that this can happen on. MySpace is the first that comes to mind. Then you have Yahoo!, Hotmail, AOL, GMail, Facebook, the list goes on and on. I will continue to explain two of  the most clever ways this is done and hopefully answer those questions that you may be scratching your head about.

One of the most simplest yet clever ways of stealing another user's password is when a malicious user creates a page that looks exactly identical to the login page of that particular website. Say MySpace for example, someone posts something where they believe the other user will open it, say a website. When that particular user clicks and opens the website it'll ask you to please login again. However, that page that asks you to login once again can be a malicious fake login page that is created to steal whatever you input. You might say "Sure but this look exactly like the real login page!". And this is true. Malicious users have become very clever, and this is not anything new. This is what is called "Phishing"(fishing). Phishing has been around for quite some time now, but how can you protect yourself against phishing? How will you be able to tell the difference between a fake login page and the real deal? I'll explain. Each and every single time a website comes up asking you to log in you need to ALWAYS look at the top and read what the URL shows. For example lets say you are on MySpace or AOL and you get a message from one of your friends(whose account has been broken into and is someone else trying to break into other accounts) saying something like "Hey check out this site" or "Hey watch this really funny video I found" or something along those lines and you they give you a website to check out. Naturally you are going to think nothing is wrong because this came from somebody you know. So you open it and goto the website they gave you and it asks you to re-login again, what should you do? Read the URL. If you're on MySpace it needs to say "http://login.myspace.com&qu... and if it does not say "login.myspace.com" then you are most definitely on a fake phishing page. Because the phishers can create everything that is exactly identical to the real login page with the exception of the url name, the url will probably show where they uploaded it to, or perhaps if they actually bought a domain it will show that.

Phishers have tried to taken it a step further where they are actually registering domains that trick you into thinking it says "hotmail.com" or "login.myspace.com". By registering a domain that says perhaps "login.mypsace.com" you could be easily mistaken for the real thing because it happens to say "mypsace.com" rather than "myspace.com". Since they replace a couple of letters you take a quick glance at it and don't even notice the two letters and you think you're really on myspace.com, when in reality you are on a fake login page that will capture whatever you input into that login screen. This why you need to be extremely careful when reading what the URL says and making sure it says exactly "hotmail.com" or "login.myspace.com" or "GMail.com" because if not, and you really think you are on a real login page, your password is going to be stolen and sent back to that person where your information could be obtained and who knows what else.




Phishing is a sneaky, clever, yet simple way of stealing someones password and many companies now are trying as hard as they can to crack down on this. But there is yet another danger that is hidden and not known about, called "Pharming". What is Pharming? Pharming is like Phishing, the real login page will look the same and will steal your information but with one exception...the URL will be authentic to the real website. Meaning you will not know the difference between this and a real login page because the URL will not be any different and chances are if the malicious user who created it is experienced the source code will not be any different either. Then how can you possibly protect your account from something like this? Well it's much more difficult to detect and Pharming isn't something that many users know much about. Think of a phishing page that is actually installed on your computer. This is much different in the sense that Phishing only occurs when you click on a link that contains the fake login page. However, you could type in "yahoo.com" or "myspace.com" and it'll bring you to a page that looks exactly to a tee like the real page, but it is in fact another fake login page where if you login you will be sending that information back to the user who created it.

So how can you even detect that you have been a victim of Pharming? Well it all depends on how it is design to re-act. You can consider Pharming a Virus, and the only reason it will not be caught by your anti-virus is because more times than none it is a homemade virus. Homemade viruses and mal-ware will not be caught by any type of security application...but I'll cover that in another article. For now we need to cover on how to detect Pharming. Now Pharming can be detected in a number of different ways. For example, say you open your browser and type in "mail.yahoo.com" which is the website for logging into your email account for Yahoo! and you see the login page load, right? Okay no problems. Except that once it is finished loading you will see it re-load again. Many users ranging from beginners all the to experienced many times unless they know what Pharming is will not even notice this nor pay any attention to it. Another way to tell if you have been infected with a Pharming page is if you goto a website and login and hit submit like you always do and suddenly after hitting "Submit" or "Login" or whatever it says you will see it load then it will return back to the login page again like nothing even happened.

We know what Pharming is, and we now know how to detect it, we know what it does, now the only question that remains is how to avoid or rid yourself of anything on your computer that is causing "Pharming". The best defense against Pharming is to not get infected to begin with. It is a good ahcnce that you might have gotten infected by downloading something you shouldn't have. These things can range from an email attachment, to third-party software, to P2P applications, all the way to torrents. The simple fact is that you never download email attachments from anyone you do not know, and if you do not know the person, don't even open up the email...simply delete it. Even if it is from somebody you may know, that person could have gotten infected with something or their account broken into and they sent this to you so they can also break into yours. Who knows how many others received an email from a frienmd or relative or co-worker thinking it is legitimate only to find out much later on(or if at all) that it was not who they thought it was and it was a ploy used only to break into your account for malicious purposes.

To rid yourself of Pharming can be a very tedious process. If you believe you have been a victim of Pharming the chances are great that you are using "Windows" and the chances are even greater that you are using an "Administrator" account. By default when you use Windows you are automatically a system "Administrator" with Administrator privileges. Simply create another account in Windows by going to Start>Control Panel>User Accounts>Create a New Account(this varies with each version of Windows). When you created a new account make sure you select it to be a "Limited" account and not an "Administrator" account. You are essentially creating a new Windows account which is "Limited" meaning the privileges are so limtied that if you get infected with Pharming or 90% of any type of malware that it will not be able to function simply because it will not be able to bring up a Pharming page because the virus can not operate correctly. Now a limited account is great for combatting viruses and such, but it is very limited on the way you can use Windows. So if you need to update anything or do anything where you need Administrator privileges simply switch back to your old account, do what you need to do and make sure you always "Log Off" of your Administrator account. And please once again, ditch Internet Explorer and always use the latest version of "Mozilla Firefox" at mozilla.com.

Unless users are educated about Phishing and Pharming then anyone who wants access to an account is probably going to get it. And about 80% of the time a user has been Phished of their password, the real owner of the account does not know that this has taken place. I hope you all are educated enough now to be able to keep your accounts and information out of the hands of identity theives, hackers, and online terrorism. If we don't in turn educate those who are victims or those who could be infected then this will just continue to be a growing issue.

He had to be man to die, he had to be God to be sinless. When Christ died on the cross, God saw this as the payment for all of our sins. Christ was our substitute. He died in our place. The Bible tells us many things about His love for us, one notible is Isaiah 53:6 "The Lord has laid upon Christ the sin of us all".

Look at it this way:

The Vikings ruled the sea and took over many different things(things I guess as far as islands and stuff). There was then this new leader who arose up. Early on in his reign of being King someone was stealing from the treasury. The King ordered that when the theives were caught they would be given ten lashes for their crimes. Time went by and still nobody confessed or was captured. The King then ordered twenty lashes. Still nobody was caught and nobody confesses. The King finally decited fifty lashes to those who were caught in the ring of robberies from the treasury.

Well finally after all this time they had caught the one stealing from the treasury. Guess who it was? The King's mother...

So now the King had a decision to make, he is ordered to punish the guilty of their crimes. However can his love be so great for his mother to let her go?

Well the time came for him to make his decision about what to do with his mother. And it was ordered by law that he MUST punish the guilty. So the entire nation came to see what decision he would make. He ordered his mother to be tied up in front of the entire nation and her back to be exposed. Just before the first lash begins he stops them. He walks up behind his mother, pulls up the back of his shirt and takes all of the punishment for her.

His love was satisfied for his mother by being punished for her crimes and sins that she had committed. It is the same with God, his love was satisfied and demonstrated, as well as his justice when he sent His only son into this world to take the punishment of our sins for us. Imagine if you had to take fifty lashes and God walked up behind you and took them all for you.

Now, imagine you were being beat, hit, and tortured. Yes just try to imagine. You were being hit by different people with whips and obtaining lashes. However, there were nails and thorns and pieces of glass on the tips of them and they would just shred you to bits. You were then mocked and given a crown of thorns which sunk into your head. Then you had to carry this heavy heavy cross an entire mile after that sevdere beating. They then put you on it and drove huge nails in both hands and both feet. They then left you there to die.

Now you can't imagine the pain of that to be honest. But say that Jesus stood up before that happened and took the entire thing for YOU. What kind of God would love us SO much to send his son to be crucified like that?

What comes to mind is the verse from Jeremiah 31:3 where God tells us "Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love" that loves continues to this day. This paints a gruesome picture, but it also paints how great the love of our Heavenly Father is. "How Great Is Our God"?

Now we all know about doubting Thomas in the late part of the twentieth chapter of the book of John, right? Well I didn't until I had studied it a couple of weeks ago. Jesus appeared to many, worked miracles with many. Some came to Thomas and told him about the Lord "We have seen him!" Thomas replied "Until I see him with my own two eyes and touch his side and put my finger into the holes in his hands and feet and smell him I will not believe". Most of this is paraphrased by the way. The Lord appears before him and says "Stop doubting and believe". Thomas then said "My Lord! My God!" John 20:28. Jesus then says "You believed because you have seen, blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed." John 20:29.

Are you like Thomas? Don't be. Jesus came and took the suffering and punishment so that we can be with God in Heaven and reign with him for all eternity.

But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. John 20:31

This is my thoughts and desires for this Easter day. Let us not celebrate and think upon Jesus' death and resurrection only on this one day, but for every single day of our entire lives.

You have multiple files that you decide you want to get rid of. So, you right-click and select 'Delete' and then it's gone, right? Wrong. This is because files on your computer are accessed through a file allocation table, which tells the operating system where in your disk a file can be found. These are marked on the file allocation table by it's identifier. When you delete a file you are not really deleting it off your computer, but are instead simply removing it's entry on the file allocation table so that the computer can no longer access it. This brings us to the second step, how can we securely and safely remove this information? To understand this we can approach it from two different methods, either locking it up with an un-crackable password, or attempting to rid it. In my opinion I would say it is much safer to remove something rather than lock it up in a cubicle.

The process securely removing information happens when you can remove it and write it over with bits of random data multiple times. However, it is difficult for the average uneducated computer user to differentiate between how many is not enough. 7 passes is the national standard for the U.S. government, the NSA, and many different branches of the U.S. government. 8 passes is the national standard for Canada's government. Well since the government uses this many it must really work, right? Wrong again. 7 or 8 passes is nothing to break, the most passes that has ever been recovered by the U.S government is 14 passes. That being said, Britian's national standard for overwritting files is 38. It seems we are still behind in the times as far as some areas are concerned. Well someone then said "Enough is enough, we can fix this problem!" that someone is the infamous Peter Gutman. And so came the 'Gutman Method'. The Gutman Method just not only overwrites data with 35 passes, but it does much more than that. Of course this discussion could be an article all in it's own.

You may be thinking "Well this is nice information, but how do I utilize this technique to my own advantage?" Well to answer that question there are a number of applications you can use to securely erase files, and yes, even your entire hard drive. The best option to erase files is a nice program called "Window Washer". This application is created by the same company who created the Anti-Spyware program I've mentioned in my previous articles, SpySweeper. With Window Washer you can select between Quick method(1 pass), DoD(7 passes), NSA(14 passes), Gutman(35 passes), and Random(you select your own number of passes manually). Window Washer also gives you the option of creating a bootable disk to wipe your HDD with the same methods listed above. However, I highly highly recommend something called "Darik's Boot and Nuke" or DBAN. This is a boot disk that gives you the passes mentioned above, while giving you different methods of magnetic wiping methods.

Pretty much the idea here is that if you can pile tons of useless information onto something it becomes unreadable. And rightfully so. However, it isn't a fool-proof method of erasing anything. Sure, there is probably no way to recover something has been passed over, say, 60 times. But if you want a 0% chance of your data not being recovered is to cut it up, set it on fire, blow it up, and scatter it in 5,000 pieces in different places around the world. And even then, who knows?

We use computers for our personal needs, sometimes for entertainment and others may use it for business reasons. But there comes a point and time where you will have to have security and privacy. If you are connected to the internet, and you do not have a firewall enabled, you can become infected with the Blaster worm within 60 seconds. That's how dangerously worms are floating around the internet. And for this reason you need to have security software. I recommend the following: A firewall, anti-virus, anti-spyware, and a safe web browser. For a firewall I highly recommend "Zone Alarm" this free firewall is by far the absolute best you will find, others may argue comodo, kerio, or agnitum are better. In my opinion Zone Alarm is better in many ways, it's automatically configured to stealthly hide your ports from the internet, and is better configured. If you're not so serious then the built in firewall "Windows Firewall" is a good alternative.

As far as Anti-Virus is concerned, I recommend "AVG" from Grisoft. It is a free non intrusive anti-virus that is just as good as norton or anything else you will purchase but will not "bogg" down your system. With anti-spyware there are a number of great choices. ..1 I would recommend "Windows Defender" above all, but the others are "Ad-Aware" and "SpyBot". If you're willing to spend money then "Spy Sweeper" from Webroot is extremely well built and is the absolute best of the best as far as it catching a very high percentage of spyware. Besides using a firewall, anti-virus and anti-spyware, you will need to have a safe web browser.

I highly suggest you to use Mozilla FireFox. It's popularity is skyrocketting and is the safest web browser(and easiest) to use. Web browsers I do not recommend are Internet Explorer, AOL's browser, or anything else that allows ActiveX scripting. If you use a web browser that allows ActiveX then somebody can put a malicious script on a website, have you visit that site(perhaps accidentally by even a popup or social engineering), and it will download the scripting onto your computer "without" your knowledge. From there, they can track what websites you go on, display popup ads, or even capture your passwords. This is what is called "Spyware". And it is how most users get infected besides downloading malicious content.

ALL of your security software should be configured to automatically search and download for updates, and many already are. Ad-Aware and Spybot S&D will search for updates atuoamatically. Ad-Aware will search within a longer period, I would recommend setting it to 7 days to wait until searching for updates. Ad-Aware does not run in the background, which means you will need to launch it in order for it to apply the needed definitions.



ALL of your security software(besides your firewall) needs to be set to scan automatically. The reason for this is mainly for convenience, if you run your computer all day and go off and on at your pleasure, then setting the software to automatically scan at a given time of the day is essential. It will scan, and quarantine anything malicious it picks up and be finished by the time you return to your PC. Make sure to schedule it for a time when you might think the computer may not be in use(eg. early in the morning or during the afternoon).What does it mean to "quarantine" something?

Ad-Aware, SpyBot S&D, SpySweeper, AVG and all security software(besides firewalls obviously) have what is called a "quarantine archive". When a file or object is placed into the "quarantine archive" it can no longer be used and it cannot function AT ALL. In this case, a malicious file of some sort. Say a scanner tracks the origin of spyware to a file, it will take it and quarantine it, and it then will no longer be able to operate anymore. If it gets removed from quarantine, then there is a chance of it still spying on your activity.



Norton Anti-Virus: BAD! Avoid at all possible costs. Sure, Norton Anti-Virus is very good at catching viruses, and spyware, and stopping popup ads, and blocking ad-ware, but come to think of how that is bogging down your system. Norton anti-virus will run your system down and eat up your processes. Many who advertise an anti-virus, anti-spyware/adware, popup blocker, and built in firewall should all be avoided.



Why? ..1 There is no need to block popup ads because our safe browser that we have been discussing, Mozilla Firefox, does not allow popup ads. AT ALL. Most popup ads are from a website to website basis. Many users get popups unexpectedly, that is what is called adware. Companies are trying to advertise to you their products, after tracking what you surf for. Then they can even spam your email according to what you may have searched for, shopped for, or bought online. AVG is just as good as norton but no as intrusive, constantly bothering you like norton does and running your system down to less than that of a snail. Ad-Aware, Spybot, as well as Windows Defender will be adequate enough to stop about 99% of all spyware you will come across. SpySweeper still sits high above the rest when it comes to catching most of what you will be infected with. Ofcourse, the best defense to stopping spyware and viruses is to not get infected to begin with.

Next article we will cover actual "Privacy" software and discuss what type of habits we should change inorder to stop getting infected with malware. We are also going to bring up the two topics which include: Protecting your privacy and being able to safely and permanently deleting files...military grade style.

You know as humans I think we can get greedy. We want things, I mean as we live here we are called to be servants of Jesus Christ but we also want. And becuase we have so much faith in our Lord and savior we pray to Him and ask Him of these things. And sometimes what we have to come to understand is that we pray for what we thought would come true didn't come true in our hearts of what we thought what we wanted, God knew best. And when we didn't see what we wanted to see, we should walk by faith. And even when we understand things or don't understand things we should still walk by faith because faith is not when you see you're like "Oh okay well I'll walk by faith now because I see". That's not faith. Faith is when you can't see, and something that you've been praying for, and that you've been wanting and you have been praying for that and it didn't come true in your own heart. And when you don't see what you wanted to see, you need to walk by faith. That's faith! When you walk and you don't see.

Those are the words of Jeremy Camp before singing the song he wrote on his honeymoon called "I Will Walk By Faith". He was praying for His wife to be healed. And she ultimately was, she's with Jesus. But she passed away evidently. So what he may have wanted in His own heart didn't come true, but that's because God knows best. God knows exactly what we need and when we need it and why we need it. He is truly our map in this world. And when you are praying for something like that, and you cannot see, you continue to walk by faith, not by sight. Because if we were to walk by sight we'd be doing things that cause us to become spiritually dead. But if we walk by faith, faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and His plan for your life, we will only grow that much stronger. But like I said, everybody wants something. Weither it be that new job, or perhaps that guy or girl. And you were just praying for something that you really wanted, and it didn't come true in your own heart. But you still continue to walk by faith and you don't let anything interrupt your walk and your focus on the Lord.

Because only God knows what is best for you, and if something doesn't work out, it was for a reason. But realize this, what God wants for you is only the absolute best. So if something doesn't go according to how your heart had planned, then don't fret about it. Because what will be put in place of that will be so gloriously better than what you wanted, that you won't even remember it anymore. Nobody can script your life any better than our Lord Jesus Christ. I've experienced this the past couple of months. I won't say exactly what it is my heart wanted and what I was praying for and what I thought I wanted(though those who know me probably know what it is anyway), but in the end The Lord made it exactly clear to me why. And I couldn't believe it, how he just spoke to me and it just hit me so hard that this is something I've wanted for so long, and now that it didn't work out, look at what happened? Look at what this really is and why it wouldn't have worked out. It was incredible to say the least. And now I understand why it is so important to walk by faith and through walking by faith it makes it so much easier to put things and experiences past you. Because you know what the Lord has planned out for you is going to be so incredibly great that nothing else would come close. Who better to decide your life than the one who granted it to you? And after that experience of what I had my heart set on for the past few month didn't work in the way I had expected, I just had to ask the Lord to help take it off my mind now that it is over so I may regain my focus towards Him. And that He did.

I wanted to make this a two part blog, but I don't think there is anymore that needs to be said honestly. Just something I've learned and heard about and a very important experience I wanted to share. I fully understand now why it is so very important to walk by your faith and not by what you see. And by doing that not only does your relationship come closer to the Lord,but it teaches you to not become so disouraged when something doesn't go according to the way you planned. So, the most important lesson here to will learn and have to understand is that you have to walk by faith, even when you cannot see. Because if you can suddenly see and say "Well okay now I'll walk by faith because I can see", then thats not truly faith. You're just now believeing and walking by faith just because someting happened the way you wanted it to and because now you believe you can see. And sometimes to fully understand the importance of walking by faith one may have to actually experience something like myself. how I wanted something so badly and prayed about it and even said to the Lord "I want what you want, but this is what I desire. Show me what you desire." and when I wanted His will, he showed me what he wanted. And even why he wanted something not to turn out the way I wanted it to. I hope and pray that my experiences can be your prosper. :)

2 Corinthians 5:7

"For we walk by faith, not by sight." - King James Version, New American Standard Bible, English Standard Version, American Standard Version
"We live by faith, not by sight." - New International Version
"For we live by believing and not by seeing." - New Living Translation
"But we live by faith, not by what we see." - Contemporary English Version
"Our life is lived by faith. We do not live by what we see in front of us." - New Life Version
"For through faith we walk, not through sight." - Young's Literal Translation

It's the age old debate, closed ports verses stealthed ports. First, what is a port? A port is the door to your computer, there's different ports for different things. The three-way handshake takes place, and the information is then delivered to your computer to a certain port, and the information is then received. But we can save that for another topic. Now, the age old question is would you like your ports to show up as being closed, or as being stealthed? My own opinion is that I prefer stealthed over closed. If someone probes your computer would you rather them see ALL of your ports as being "CLOSED"? Or would you rather them probe and see nothing? I prefer stealthed just because if someone probes me I'd rather them see nothing, it makes it as if I don't exist, it's like someone knocking on the door and me not answering or even acknowledging. But then again if they see "CLOSED" they know you exist but they know your ports are closed and there really isn't much they can do. The fact they now know you exist though means they can not only probe you, but they can do more malicious damage by knowing your internet protocol exists like knocking you offline with a denial of service or anything else. Although really the only difference between stealthed or closed is that when 'so and so' application taps your firewall and hits a closed port it will stop. If it sees it's 'stealthed' it'll continue to try and try and try to connect to a port that isn't there, which is wasting bandwidth(although small) and taking up connections overhead.In summary, users should be much less worried about how they "look" to the evil outside, because it is irrelevant. The real differences occur in problems to their own internet activities directly caused by a misguided belief in "stealth at all costs". This is just a summary and the article could be very much larger but this is just a small summary of closed and stealthed ports.

Who can say that you can predict the future and get it exactly the way you want? Who are you to say that because this happened that will definitely happen so if that does happen this will also happen? It isn't practicle to say to yourself and/or others that oh this will definitely happen because I just know it. Well how do you know it? Some may say "well I just do." Well how can you just happen to know something that has not happened yet? The answer is simple, you can't. Only Christ can tell what will happen tomorrow or tell of your death and even elaborate on how or why. Not you. Don't you think it might be an insult to predict something without knowledge? How do you think Christ feels when his creation are saying things are going to happen without knowing? We cannot stand by ourselves, and we cannot plan the future.

We all use computers for many activities. Some use it for entertainment purposes or keeping in touch with friends or family, while others may use it as their primary business tool to store their critical information. Whatever the reason may be, your data is very important to you and losing it, especially in a business environment, can really be frustrating.

PCs can become infected with Viruses or Spyware that can possibly wipe out many files on your hard drive, or perhaps you may have accidentally deleted files you thought you would never have any intended use for again. When in the future you find out you really did need those files, this is when using computers for storing data can put a hamper on you and your work. Which is why backing up your data could never be less important.

But there are ways to back up your data safely, and there are ways to back up your data which are not safe. The easiest ways of safely backing up your data easily is to buy a CD with a large quantity of free disk space available or possibly think of investing in an external hard drive that is compatible with your USB which will be large enough to hold your data. Even using web sites with uploading services are a great free alternative. Depending on a user's storing habits, every two to four weeks would be a great time to backup data on your PC. Every user that is using their PC on a regular basis and has a lot of important or confidential data, needs to be backed up routinely.

Bad habits users pickup is when their data actually is gone. They then make an attempt to recover it.

This is obviously a no-brainer since you would like to recover as much of the lost data as possible, but to avoid this you can back it up before hand. Running off and trying different methods and paying hundreds if not thousands to try and get as much data recovered as possible is not a smart user.

If you were to back up your data in the first place you would not be worried about this problem. So basically there really is no "bad" way of backing up data. Anyway an individual makes an attempt to back up any sort of information is a good thing. Unless obviously they just store it on another computer as that can obviously crash or lose data just as easily. And yes, even Macs.

So remember, we have CD's/DVD's, HDD's (hard drives), thumb/usb drives, large email accounts, free online file manager accounts, and perhaps the built in windows option to backup data.

However, those are all great ways to backup data, I would rather recommend hardware rather than online accounts. Because anything can happen to an account somewhere online, a glitch, a flaw of some sort. Atleast if your information is stored on hard copy there isn't much that can happen to it other than perhaps an unfortunate event or natural disaster that would destroy it. I hope some of you have learned something new from the article, I plan to write more about security related topics in the future.