It was the year of computing dangerously, and next year could be worse.

That is the assessment of computer security experts, who said 2006 was marked by an unprecedented spike in junk e-mail and more sophisticated Internet attacks by cybercrooks.

Though Internet-crippling virus attacks now seem to be a thing of the past, PC users didn’t feel a lot more secure in 2006. That’s because online attacks have become more sneaky and professional, as a new breed of financially motivated cyber criminals has emerged as enemy number one. Microsoft patched more bugs than ever and whole new classes of flaws were discovered in kernel-level drivers, office suites and on widely used Web sites. Vendors’ chatter about security is at an all-time high, but the bad guys are still finding lots of places to attack.

He cites a warning by Prof. Nigel Smart of the University of Bristol (UK): “I am concerned that from some of the posts I have seen, by colleagues, students and others, that there is a deep societal problem emerging of people giving up their privacy without realising it”.

Chat rooms used to be considered a prime privacy worry but they were effectively abandoned as worries about sexual predators rose.

December 24, 2006 — If you’re not careful what you throw in your trash, you might be throwing away your most valuable possession: your identity.

In the last two months, police report at least seven complaints from local residents whose trashcans or trash was stolen.

“This is what we commonly refer to as Dumpster diving,” police Sgt. William Dietrich said.

This sort of trash picking can be profitable.

“The suspect will obtain vital financial information by simply digging through trash,” Dietrich said. “It’s become a problem recently in the past three to four years.”

This year alone, there have been about 1,000 cases of identity theft reported to the Brownsville Police Department, Sgt. Jimmy Manrrique said.

In 2001, there were more than 100,000 cases of identity theft in the United States, and that has increased to more than 1 million cases per year, Dietrich said.

“Over a five-year period, more than 27 million consumers were victims of identity theft,” according to a Federal Trade Commission Survey conducted in 2003.

On this Christmas Eve I wish of you and yours a Happy Holidays, please be safe and smart when it comes to last minute shopping. Don’t take any chances with your online purchases and your ID, make sure you always use a secure servers and look for the little padlock when buying and using your credit cards online.