As we become and more and more web savvy, and the home and online business and home computer entertainment sectors increase in popularity, year on year, so the opportunities for the thieves and the plain sick and destructive, rise proportionally.

Regardless of whether you use a mac or a PC, ID theft and malware attacks are becoming more frequent. Here's our top tips on what to be aware of.

• Malware activity. figures for malware activity (ID threats) show it just keeps on increasing, as documented by the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), who claim that the threat to UK identities has never been greater.

The ICO blames a mix of poor personal document management and a lack of online awareness, with over 35% of Britons making an online debit or credit transaction without checking the security of the site and 88% using an email link to access a site.

Malware activity, particularly from China and Russia, has increased by over 50% in the last two years and feeds off consumers' ignorance of how they can be lured to phishing sites or how spyware can hide in the system and capture login and password details.

• Phishing. This is when forged bogus and hoax email, web pages and sites, are sent to your email address, with a fraudulent link asking for such personal details as your address, bank details, login details and passwords. For more details on current phishing threats see the Anti-Phishing Group at www.antiphishing.org, who are committed to wiping out internet scams and fraud.

• Trojan Horse. Like the classic tale of the Trojan Horse at Troy, in the context on computing a Trojan is something that hides within something else, or is pretending to be something else. A simple example of a Trojan horse would be a program named "waterfalls.scr" which is pretending to be a free waterfall screensaver. When run, it instead unloads hidden programs, commands, scripts, or any number of commands with or without your knowledge or consent. Malicious Trojan Horse programs are often used to get round your computer's protection systems to get unauthorized access to the your computer, your business, and your personal details. You can guard against tojans by making sure your computer has up to date spyware and malware installed.

• Viruses. A computer virus is a computer program that can copy itself and infect a computer without permission or knowledge of the user. The term "virus" is also commonly used, albeit erroneously, to refer to many different types of malware programs. The original virus may modify the copies, or the copies may modify themselves. A virus can only spread from one computer to another when it can get at an uninfected computer, for instance by a user sending it over a network or the Internet, or by carrying it on a portable medium such as a CD or USB drive. Viruses can also spread to other computers by infected files on a file system that is accessed by another computer. Viruses are more common on PCs than Macs.

• Security requirements. Despite the rise in online fraud, there is still confusion and much complacency among consumer IT users about the level of security they need, to ensure they are safe from online predators. Installing one or two bits of security software is simply not enough.Home businesses, especially Internet Businesses, have to protect themselves and maintain that protection through regular anti-virus and anti-spyware updates, as well as an activated firewall.