Information Protection and Security

File sharing technology and P2P software was designed to exchange music, movies, videos, and other files over the Internet. The sharing of music and movies through the use of file sharing peer to peer (P2P) software available on the Internet is discouraged due to copyright and security issues.

Phishing is the new word in consumer online security fraud for convincing the consumer to provide confidential information through a website or email. The information may be used for fraud, identity theft, or other compromise. The university community has recently seen emails falsely labeled from a variety of financial institutions and others, including Rutgers attempting to convince the user to surrender private information.

Social engineering is the attempt to manipulate or trick a person into providing information or access to a system's information, by bypassing network security. A social engineering compromise can provide information on background, credit rating, medical history, and driving record, most of which is confidential. Colleges and universities are sometimes targeted for social engineering compromises due to inexperience of large numbers of students serving as part-time employees.

The popularity of social networking sites--such as MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and others--has exploded in recent years, with usage in the United States increasing 93% since 2006, according to Netpop Research.  The sites are popular not only with teenagers, but with adults as well: the number of adult Internet users having a social networking profile has more than quadrupled in the past four years, according the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

 Sharing information over the Internet is like shouting to a billion people.  Everyone can see the pictures you post and read the information you enter, unless you protect yourself.

Spyware is programming that can be put into your computer to gather information about you without your knowledge as information to advertisers and other interested parties. Malware includes Viruses, Worms, Spyware, Adware, Browser hijacking, Web Bugs, and other software. If you are using a computer regularly you should become familiar with the wide expanse of malicious programs which can affect computers.

A trojan is a hidden program transmitted by means of spam or e-mail, a downloaded file, thumb drive/flash drive, a CD, or even a legitimate program with hidden malicious computer code lurking inside. The computer code (a program) enters your computer undetected.