The Internet is like the world’s oceans: vast and expansive, with numerous parts left unexplored.

Meghan Martinez, the Rhode Island State Police Cyber Terrorism program manager, delivered a presentation at the Cranston Central Library on Monday morning to discuss preserving Internet safety and privacy and navigating the web.

The seminar was the middle lecture of a three-part series, coming on the heels of the recent bill that allows Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to sell users’ browsing data and histories without permission. President Donald Trump signed the legislation into effect on April 3.

“If it’s on the Internet, it isn’t private,” Martinez said, and she offered numerous examples to support the truth of that claim.

According to Martinez, a U.S. Facebook user is worth around $13.54 per quarter in advertising dollars. An example of how the ISP collection process would work is if someone searched for beach chairs on Amazon, and an advertisement popped up on their Facebook page with sales on the same or similar beach chairs.

A more malicious way of compiling information and selling it is done on what Martinez referred to as the dark web.

“It is criminalized by selling information on the dark web,” Martinez said, showing a screenshot directly from a page selling Visa cards en masse. “There is a person selling bulk Visa cards with security codes on the back for $8.50. Your social security number is worth a couple bucks. PayPal accounts go for $150. Medical records are worth quite a bit of money. People are aggregating that and selling it online.”

Martinez showed a chart examining the growing methods of stealing information. In the present, cybercriminals can use tools ranging from Ransomware to bitcoin wallet stealer to banking malware, all designed to pilfer financial or personal data. Ransomware, for example, will pop up on someone’s computer screen and hold files hostage or begin deleting them until the user pays a disclosed amount of money.

The beginning of the chart, labelled as the year 1997, had far more limited options, such as Trojans or advanced worms. By 2020, according to Martinez’s presentation, cybercrime damages could amount to $6 trillion, which card-not-present fraud is expected to reach $7 billion.

“Ninety-nine percent of the time you’ll get reimbursed, but you’ll face massive inconvenience,” Martinez, who added more than 600,000 Facebook accounts are compromised per day, said. “From the safety perspective, Google yourself, pay attention to what’s out there, particularly for people who say they don’t have social media for this reason. Think of the people who are around you. Pay attention to what information you’re putting out there, and what info people are putting out there about you.”

Martinez explored a bevy of options for safeguarding personal information on the web. She said that open wi-fi can be dangerous, especially with a new phone-like device capable of veiling itself as a public wi-fi only to siphon information.

“I could sit hidden or more out in the open, could turn on the phone and have it say it is the wi-fi, so people could connect to that,” Martinez said. “If they’re connecting to me, I can see every single thing they’re doing. Electric bill or Amazon, I can see username, password, credit card information. Use your data if you have to do something. That’s why you pay for x-amount of data.”

Using e-commerce website that begin with “https,” not saving information such as username and password and updating one’s computer and antivirus software can go a long way as well.

Https, along with the little lock symbol next to it, guarantees a “baseline level of security,” according to Martinez. Saving information, especially on a site without proper defense measures, could result in scraping. Scraping is the process of taking that private information and using it to commit some sort of malicious fraud.

Martinez advocated for the use of stronger passwords as well, displaying some simple and ineffective examples. The best passwords are ones that incorporate a wide range of numbers, symbols and uppercase and lowercase letters. These help avoid the password being cracked.

She also said it is wise to have multiple email addresses, download legitimate applications and “purge your inbox regularly.” Also, in terms of browsers, Firefox and Google Chrome are the way to go rather than Safari and especially Internet Explorer.

“Historically, more people had Windows machines than Macs, so cybercriminals will not spend more time creating a virus that 20 percent of the population has,” Martinez said of the “misconception” that Macs are safer from viruses than Windows computers. “That percentage is changing but one of the reasons that misconception still exists is the difference between app stores.

“The way that an app gets into the Apple Store is, if I’m a developer I submit it to Apple and they review it as well. [Google] PlayStore is, I’m a developer, I make my app and I put it directly up on the store. I could put Angry Bird instead of Angry Birds. There’s no third-party vetting going on.”

More Internet privacy tools can be found at sites such as DuckDuckGo, which is a “privacy-focused search engine,” and Just Delete Me. The latter helps users go back and find and delete obsolete accounts.

Martinez closed by adding that if anyone has a cyber crime to report, they could visit their local state police barracks or contact 444-1000 and ask for the computer crimes unit.