Be Secure on Line – Viruses, Spyware and Malware We have all heard of cybercrime, it's on the news and in the papers every week with warnings to all of us to protect our vital information or lose out big time to the new breed of technological criminal. Identity theft is a major concern to Governments, Banks, Businesses and Individuals across the globe.
Every time you cross a busy road you run the risk of being run down by a car or other vehicle but you can't stop crossing roads when you need to, just to stay as safe as you possibly can. What you do is understand the risk and cross the busy road but follow the Green Cross Code or Highway Code or your common sense which tells you to keep your eyes open for oncoming traffic all the time and to always take steps to safeguard yourself.
Drivers may not always see you, when they are perfectly visible to you, this is especially so at night, and if you are sensible, you wear high visibility clothing and carrying a torch or other kind of light to make yourself more visible. In short, you take precautions.
The same philosophy applies when you use the Internet's super-highway and surf the web or go on line to work, chat or learn. You have to take precautions! What is a Virus, Spyware or Malware? Malware is the generic term for Malicious Software, something which either embeds itself into your computer and causes you problems, sends you a virus or worm, or steals information from applications like your address book, then sends out spurious emails from your email address to your address book and 000's of other addresses they have been able to capture. Worms and VirusesThere can be few people who use the Internet who have not heard of or been affected by a computer virus as a result of being on line. They are picked up by opening malicious emails and by visiting "doubtful" websites, by loading "hooky" software or sharing software of files over the Internet.
You don't even have to have access to the Internet, all it takes is to load something from an infected disc perhaps from a friend and you are infected.
A Worm is a particular nasty piece of malware which embeds itself in your hard drive and then systematically starts dismantling all your data and applications. Viruses can do the same thing.
Once infected it can cost dearly to retrieve your data and clean the machines hard drives etc. SpywareSpyware is a software application which once activated, usually through an infected email, simply sits on your hard drive and sends out information from your computer to criminals and it often sends out other malware to your address book to try to infect them as well. The criminal can watch every move you make on your keyboard and has access to all your sensitive data that you have on your computer. You may as well give them the keys to your house, once embedded there is no telling what damage they can do to your reputation and wealth. What's the Answer?The answer is prevention – you should always have on your computer the best quality antivirus software you can afford and which has regular updates built in.
There are a number of well known antivirus packages around such as MacAfee; Norton; Sophos; Kaspersky; Panda; Mozilla; AVG and many more all of them have their own ways of working and good / bad points. For example, we find that Norton and MacAfee have been too intrusive and slowed down our computers; AVG by a company called Grisoft, on the other hand has been much easier to set up and run with less interference.
A single machine license with regular updates costs around £30.00 to £50.00 per year but is well worth it.
You pay your money and take your choice!
Some of these have free versions of their software, but we always recommend that you should purchase the products along with regular updates. Many free antivirus products only update on one or two days a week and those who produce malicious software know their release dates so issue viruses before the release dates. These days you need antivirus protection that updates at least on a daily basis and best of all every few minutes or hourly.
The more regular your system is updated with the latest antivirus and malware protection the less chance you have of becoming infected by insidious worms or viruses. Microsoft Defender now comes packaged with Microsoft Office etc and is a very useful addition to protecting your computer(s). Anti Spam Software:If you are on the Internet and have an email account, you will have had Spam email, perhaps in the millions, some of it funny but much of it malicious and all of it unwanted! Spam emails are responsible for a significant number of cyber crimes around the world and have had so much bad press that we find it hard to believe that people are still trapped by the scams they perform.
It has been estimated that all the world's Spam (trash and unwanted junk email) is generated by around 7 people across the globe and the sending of spam emails in themselves generate millions of £'s daily for the main Internet Service Providers who charge for using band-width. So it is not in their interests to curtail spam emails and the criminals must be making money from doing it otherwise they would be doing something different.
It is surprising how gullible some people can be!
The golden rule with emails is never open an email if you don't know where it's from or you can't trust the source! You must even be careful of email form trusted sources and during their passage across the Internet through various gateways emails can pick up viruses.
If you obtain your email from a reliable Internet Service Provider, they normally have Anti Spam and Anti Virus checkers installed on the servers from which your email comes. This may cut out much of the spam and viruses reaching you machine but you must have your own to make sure that you cut it to a minimum.
Any offer you get on line via an unwanted email which sound too good to be true – USUALLY IS!
Criminals have become very clever at extracting information on line and will make you offers that seem very difficult to refuse. Once you reply to their offer or email request they have confirmed you email address and can use it to send out false emails with your email address to all and sundry for criminal purposes. Emails that ask you for your passwords or for details of your bank and a small transfer of money renewal of passwords and user names are all false! They are called Phishing Emails and they are after your private information so they can draw money from your bank accounts or purchase goods illegally with you credit cards.
Your bank or credit card company will NEVER ask you for passwords or usernames to be confirmed on line! So don't reply to these emails!
Generally free email addresses are the most susceptible to viruses and spam. Whilst free email and free anti-virus applications are attractive, these free editions and services can never out-perform the paid for service. It is simple logic, free antivirus and anti spam will only be updated when they feel they need to, while paid for applications receive regular updates, some every few minutes / every hour or so.
Any antivirus / anti-spam software that updates less than once a day is out of date before it updates to you, so you are at risk.
Furthermore, if you are in business a free email address is such as a "freeserve" or "hotmail" address does not always inspire confidence.
To us, nothing looks more unprofessional than not having your own email address associated with your business; and you could be putting yourself at risk from malware if your email provider does not keep their anti-virus up dated very regularly.
These are of course our opinions and others may differ in theirs. If you are going to be as secure as you can be on line then make sure you follow these rules: - Never open an email attachment that you are unsure of, better to get the source to send it twice rather than infect your machine.
- Make sure you have the latest Internet Security software with regular updates installed on your machine. You wouldn't leave home without locking your front door would you? If you don't have a good quality antivirus / anti-spam anti-malware package you are doing just that with your computer!
- Steer clear of free email accounts wherever possible and if you must use them make sure you use a reputable one, but try to keep this for a personal address to use when testing things on line or when answering emails which you feel could be a little suspicious – however, we would never answer anything that looks even a tiny bit suspicious...it's too risky!
- Make sure you set time aside to do deep scans of your hard drive with quality malware and spy-ware detectors. Here are some you may find useful.
FinallyWe hope you have found this useful. Most of you will know much of what has been discussed in the text, but to some of you it may be new so we make no apologies about repeating ourselves.
You cannot be too wary on line these days. Computer security is critical to you and your family's well-being when you are surfing or communicating.
Don't spoil the ship for a half-pennyworth of tar, be brave and buy something decent and you will be as safe as you can be!
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