Aaron Stern

A new poll shows Americans care overwhelmingly about digital privacy.

Like it or not, your children are going to be on the web. Kaspersky’s award-winning parental controls let you monitor their activity and block them from any sites that you choose.

Expert reviewers are declaring KIS 2015 the best version yet, and one of the best AV products on the market.

It would be nice to think that it would take a lot more than an overeager amateur hacker like Seth Green’s character from the 2003 movie “The Italian Job,” to bring traffic to a screeching halt.

Preparing to watch your child trundle off to school with these expensive devices in their backpacks will be a lot easier if you guard against the many perils that can threaten them – theft, malware and unwanted Internet browsing chief among them.

If it is absolutely necessary that you check your email and the only way to do it is on a public computer, forward your email to a disposable email account like Mailinotor or Trashmail that has a short life and a timed expiration.

Wireless networks are often insecure, and are notorious havens for attackers, who hang out in coffee shops, hotel swimming pools and anywhere else people congregate to the closest Internet connection, as they are easy targets to breach systems anonymously and steal personal data.

If you think that threat isn’t real, ask Miss Teen USA 2013, whose webcam was hacked into and used to take nude photos of her.

The list of highly touted devices that have been launched in recent years with embarrassing flaws – security and otherwise – is long and distinguished.

Free antivirus programs offer basic protections, but in order to be protected against phishing attacks that can steal your personal and financial data you need an Internet browser security program.

Many of the websites that claim to be World Cup streaming services will harm your system and can steal your credit card information, if you let them.

According to research by Kaspersky Lab, 22 percent of phishing scams on the web target Facebook.

Adults can choose to face the financial consequences of their own actions, but they may want to know how to prevent their kids from running up exorbitant credit card bills tied to the parents’ iTunes or Google Play accounts.

App stores offer all the promise of a virtually unlimited range of games and tools, but are rife with pitfalls too. These include bad apps, ballooning costs, and malicious apps, particularly on Android devices.

One FIFA-related phishing site included a supposedly downloadable ticket, which turned out to be a malicious form of the Banker Trojan that steals sensitive data surrounding users’ online banking data.

Windows Phones continue to grow in popularity, which means users should take precautions to make their devices as secure as possible.

When handling new or complicated attachment types from unknown senders, it is wise to always scan the downloaded attachment with an antivirus system.

But while Android’s market figures continue to pile up, so do the knocks against the company’s security protocols.

Kaspersky Internet Security for Android identified and neutralized 100 percent of the malware programs; the average score of the other solutions tested was a 95-percent success rate.