But those firewalls have been cracked in a number of high-profile cases. A recent Gannett New Jersey poll found that 57 percent of those surveyed don t feel safe sending credit card numbers over the Internet. More than one-third have no problem with it. Internet security experts say anything sent over the Internet without being encrypted should be considered public. Sitting thousands of miles away, hackers might be just a few keystrokes away from gaining access to your home computer s hard drive including the Social Security number and address you entered into tax software.
Hackers don t fit only one kind of profile.
Internet experts say they range from bored teenagers to professional criminals. IBS Interactive, an Internet provider based in Cedar Knolls, logs at least three hacker attacks each day. Some are so-called Smurf attacks launched by hackers who get their kicks by overloading networks to slow down Internet traffic. Others are probes looking for weak spots in IBS s network, or for home computers to control. IBS, which has 20,000 users in four states, has learned over the years how to filter out attacks.