Don’t
*Expose yourself that you are not available in town or give your details about location and itinerary when email auto responder enabled. 
*Hand over your credit card to any person.
*Auto-connect to open Wi-Fi (wireless fidelity) networks .
*Get confused, frightened or pressured into divulging information if you receive an e-mail purporting to be from your bank or credit card provider as criminal use scare tactics.
*Keep passwords stored on your computer.
*Go online without virus protection and a firewall in place.
*Open email attachment if you are not sure about it.
*Assume a company is legitimate based on “appearance” of the website.
*Be wary of investments that offer high returns at little or no risk.
*Accept packages that you didn’t order.
Do’s
*Install and use a firewall, pop-up blocker and spyware detector.
*Ensure that your virus definitions are up to date and run anti-virus and spyware detectors/cleaners regularly.
*Make Backups of Important Files and Folders to protect important files and records on your computer if your computer malfunctions or is damaged by a successful attacker?
*Use strong passwords – Easy to remember and difficult to guess type password. Use alphanumeric and special characters in your password. The length of password should be as long as possible (More than 8 characters).
*Use a variety of passwords, not same for all of your accounts.
*Be extremely wary of spam legitimate looking email asking for confidential information. Never ever click on the link given in the spam email.
*Always delete spam emails immediately and empty the trash box to prevent accidental clicking on the same link.
*Be wary of websites that require your card details up front before you actually place an order.
*Not to believe everything you read online.
*Take your time – do not rush into things.
Know some terms:
Adware: A program that displays advertising through pop-up or pop-under windows while you are browsing the net.
Backdoor: An undocumented way of gaining access to a program, a computer system or network. The backdoor is usually implemented by the creator of the program, and is usually only known to him. A backdoor is a potential security risk.
Blue Box: A device used to hack into telephone systems.
Cracking: Cracking can be defined as modifying a program, to make it behave as you want it to behave and not behave as what its creator had wanted.
Cyberstalking: Stalking is a series of actions that puts a person in fear for their safety. A stalker may follow you, harass or black mail you. Cyberstalking is the act of stalking, but carried out with the aid of (or through) computers and the Internet.
Cyber punks: The stereotypical image of hackers, they are usually antisocial, socially inept, and burdened with angst directed towards the real world which was unfair to them.
Cyberterrorism: The act of carrying out terrorism using cyberspace, or in other words, the Internet. It is the hacking or attacking of networks and computers to obtain or modify information for political and/or social objectives or rather, a way to quickly and easily distribute propaganda and get a lot of attention drawn to it.
Email flooding: The act of sending huge volumes of emails to a single user at any one time.
Encryption: The process of preventing an unauthorized person from reading or changing a particular data, by protecting the data.
Ethical hacking: Use of hacking knowledge to forcefully attempt to enter a network to find its weaknesses. It is also referred to as ‘legalized hacking’.
Hacking: In the olden days, hacking referred to basically exploring and figuring out how the wired world works. Geeks who did this were called hackers.
However, today, the term is often used to describe computer criminals who break into or harm computers. Purists want those who break into computers to be called as “crackers” rather than “hackers”.
Identity Theft: Identity theft occurs when an unscrupulous person obtains enough of your personal information to be able to impersonate you and use your identities to obtain financial gain.
Internet auction fraud: Committing fraud by exploiting the internet auctions held by the many online auction sites, for mainly monetary reasons.
Intrusion detection system (IDS): As its name implies, an IDS detects any intrusion into the system (i.e. an illegal entry attempt by a hacker). An IDS runs in the background and silently monitors the network for any suspicious activity.
Malware: Malware or malicious programs are written with the intention of causing various types of damages and nuisances to a computer and the information on the computer.
Nigerian letter scam: Another manifestation of the cyber fraud, which tries to rob innocent people of their money. Also known as the “Advance Fee Fraud” or “4-1-9” scheme (named after the relevant section of the Nigerian Criminal Code that it violates).
Password crackers: Password crackers concern themselves with cryptography and how to break current encryption techniques.
Phishing: The act of sending faked e-mails to a user that falsely appears to come from a legitimate (and often well-known) business enterprise. This is an attempt to lure unsuspecting email users to divulge their personal data such as account usernames, passwords and credit card numbers on a bogus website.
Scam: A fraudulent business scheme aimed to hoodwink an individual or corporation. The perpetrator typically promises his victims a large financial return with little or no risk involved.
Script Kiddies: These are people (usually teenagers) who want to be recognized as dangerous hackers but lack miserably in the required determination and skills. They use ready-made cracking programs (made by others), intending to cause damage to and corrupt systems.
Spamming: Spamming is the act of sending unsolicited messages to many users at a time, possibly up to the thousands, with the usual intention of advertising products to potential customers.
Spyware: A program that gathers information about a person or an organization and sends this information to a third party, often without their permission or knowledge.
Trojan horse: Trojan horses (or simply Trojans) are computer programs that that disguise themselves to be useful software, but instead they compromise your security and privacy. Trojans can allow hackers to take control of your computer or capture your keystrokes.
Virus: A virus is a piece of computer code that that hides within other programs or documents so it can spread from computer to computer, infecting as it travels. Viruses can damage your software, your hardware, and your files. Viruses are often written with the intention of replicating themselves.
Warez: Refers to commercial software, movies and games that has been modified by a cracker and made freely available to the public on the Internet.
Website Defacement: The act of damaging the appearance of a website.
White Collar Crime: Crimes of theft and deception committed by qualified professionals.
Worm: A worm is a computer program which is programmed to spread from one computer to another maliciously, without any user interaction. Worms do not need to travel through a “host” program or file. They can travel alone and replicate themselves in great volume and slow down computer networks.
Source of Information
