The exponential growth of file-sharing services and peer-to-peer networks over recent years has made it extremely easy to share any kind of media content. Through simplified file-sharing services such as BitTorrent, eDonkey and Gnutella, it has become very easy to share and obtain copyrighted materials and pirated versions of popular applications. However, with this growth in peer-to-peer networks that allow users to share files with other users worldwide comes risks for the users, which have increased dramatically at the same time.

In today's world, more and more people use the internet to shop online. Being able to purchase online and have goods delivered to your door at your fingertips makes our daily lives easier. However, there are without a doubt some risks involved when purchasing goods and services online. There will always be criminals and nefarious actors out there who intend to take advantage of tools to get your money or your information and sell it; especially with websites such as Amazon and eBay becoming more and more popular. To that end, we'll be taking a look at a few tips you can pick up to protect you while shopping online.

A smart home is very similar to an everyday ordinary house. The main distinction between a smart home and a normal home is that ordinary mundane appliances, gadgets, and devices within the house (such as refrigerators, stoves, washing machines, etc) are replaced with a smart device version of it. These smart devices are capable of connecting to the internet and are used to help with everyday tasks. For example, a refrigerator which monitors if the food within it has reached its expiration date or a washing machine that remembers your washing settings and cycle. This grouping of smart items is commonly referred to as the Internet of Things (IoT).

Cybercrimes can be described as computer-related crimes which occur over a network. The computers involved in these crimes are either used as a means of attack or are the target the crimes. As a result of this, these attacks can be used in a plethora of ways and can range from attacking chat rooms and database systems to individual social media accounts and web applications. This allows the scope of these attacks to be capable of crippling a nation as they pose a threat not only to individual people but also to a country's security and economy.

A virtual private network (VPN) is a network technology used to extend two or more private networks over a public network (i.e. Internet). It accomplishes this by creating a secure connection between two endpoints where all of the data shared between these two are encrypted. This disallows a third-party from tampering with the data trespassing through the public network. It also means that the IP addresses of both devices on either side of the tunnel is secure from the public. This is because the IP address used on both endpoints are only used as internal IP, and they are assigned a new public IP address outside of the tunnel.

Adware is a form of malware which displays advertisement on user's screen with (or in most cases without user's consent) for the benefit of creator. Sometimes, a user's search request is redirected to an advertising website based on the marketing data stored on a user's computer. The creator gets paid for redirecting or referring traffic to advertising website on a pay-per-click basis. This has led to adware becoming quite intrusive on numerous websites and applications in a constant attempt for its developers to benefit from it. These methods included having a banner, video, pop-up, static box, or any other container appearing someone on the user's screen, usually in a position that makes them click it accidentally or otherwise.

Do you use the same password for all your online accounts? Creating a unique and strong password for each of your accounts is the first step in protecting your privacy. Learn how to create a strong password, and augment with 2-factor authentication to secure your online accounts.

Ransomware is a shorthand way of saying "ransom malware", and much like its name implies, it is a type of malware which denies the user access to a part of their system in exchange for a ransom payment. The creator of such a program reaches out to the victim with a set of instructions (usually to send the money in the form of a cryptocurrency or through a credit card) in exchange to regain control over their machine or that part of their system.

Hacking is a popular term that denotes the action of a nefarious actor in an attempt to gain unwanted access to a system. In a simpler way of wording it, this is the process of a person attempting to break into a machine or account to do some malicious activity. This isn't something limited to just the Internet either as hacking is something that can occur offline as well if the bad actor can gain physical access to your machine or account. In most scenarios, hackers do these actions to either access a user's private information such as their bank/credit card information or to use the user's account/machine in some other nefarious action such as a zombie in a DDoS attack.

Not everyone likes to be interrupted by unprecedented Ads. To block such ads, you'll have to use a software generally referred as Ad blocker. This is a content filter and is an ad blocking extension which can be added to most popular browsers. The Ad Blocking extensions work on Google Chrome, Apple Safari, Firefox, Opera, and Microsoft Edge.