DANGER!

SQL Injection, phishing, trojan horses and social engineering are all techniques to gain unortharised access to a network, computer or even commit identity theft. Ultimately there is no real way to completely protect your personal and sensitive information. However, there is ways to make is increasingly difficult for today's Black Hats. There are a bunch of freeware tools that can protect you to a certain extent. These tools include:

Free Proxys/VPNs (To mask your IP)

Hotspot Shield

CyberGhost VPN

Free Anti-Virus

Avira

AVG

BackTrack - A very powerful tool for 'Security Testing'
L0L H4X0R BLU3 H4T5

The first thing that you need to do when protecting yourself is to create strong passwords. Never use anything like these:

1. password
2. 123456
3. 12345678
4. qwerty
5. abc123
6. monkey
7. 1234567
8. letmein
9. trustno1
10. dragon
11. baseball
12. 111111
13. iloveyou
14. master
15. sunshine

Another tip for creating strong passwords is that you should never use your name, birthday or nickname. The most popular methods for cracking passwords involve try all those combinations and eventually if a neaophyte is desperate, brute force will be use. No matter how useless and slow and terrible it is it may still be used. So the best way to protect yourself i hear you say ? Have a password that is miss-spelled. As all the words in the dictionary will be used for your password, if you use a miss spelling, if will not be picked out.

Stranger Danger. I know this may seem a little stupid, but it is very important.Meeting new people and making new friends can be a wonderful experience. Although, not everyone just wants to be your bff. The simple and most effective way to access personal information is to ask for it. By becoming friends hackers have unlimited access to anything they want to know. With this in mind, stay away from sites like Omegle as they can be disturbing... and dangerous. Also if you're female, and under the age of 18 get off the internet right now, just run, please. On the other hand, they don't even need to ask... 

      Think right know how many social networking sites you are on ? How many accounts you have with different sites. Oh thats fine i hear you think, only facebook you say ? Well you better watch out, your settings by default share way too much information that is deemed safe. Social networking sites can now be used to even simulate your character and personality just by scanning your comments, likes and photos. They make identity theft way too easy.

Identity Theft - An increasingly common issue.

Don't worry, it's not too late. You can adjust who sees what on most sites which contain your personal information, if you can't hide it, or if it's not needed, don't put it on your profile. On Facebook for example change all privacy settings to only me, or close friends. Do you really want everyone to know your mobile number or email address? Your house address or post code? Where you are now and where you will be in 15 minutes? Most people have all this information on show, so change it now before you are a target. If you want someone to have your mobile number or if you want someone to have your email, message them. Tell only them, not the other one thousand people you have on your friends list, any of which could be after your accounts.

Ok so now you have hidden your sensitive data, am i safe now ? The answer is no, you will never be 100% safe. That's why you should never fully think you are protected. Always be on your guard. Another way to make sure you stay safe though is to disable cookies. WiFi passwords are easy to crack so getting into your network is no problem, giving the Black Hat is in your proximity. With that they can Inject a bad cookie into your browser and get all of your passwords. Sound bad doesn't it, so disable cookies, and try not to use WiFi. Just use a Ethernet cable running straight from your rooter.

Overall, try your best to keep safe. At the end of the day you are one of many. Unless you piss off an elite hacker, don't worry about being hacked or your identity stolen. Just try your best at protecting yourself, and you will be fine.