Date post: | 10-Jan-2016 |
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Getting To Know Your Website!
What Do I Consider Useful?
• Internet safety• Backup of critical information• Care of your computer
To give an understanding of internet safety I will point out some basic internet
dangers and then give you some advice on how to
combat these problems.
Malware, a term which is short for malicious software, covers a lot of categories and all of them are meant to do
you and/or your system harm or steal information.
• Virus• Spyware• Scareware• Trojan Horse•Worm
A virus is generally designed to do harm to your system. A virus will usually
attach itself to executable files and have a file extension of .exe. A virus is
technically the most dangerous thing for your system but becoming secondary to spyware and scareware. A virus attack is usually for bragging rites among hackers
and kids learning code, thus they are becoming less prevalent than the
programs made to make money off of you or your organization.
Scareware is, to most of my customers, the most annoying of the items in the malware category. It not only takes your computer hostage promising that if
you buy their product it will fix the myriad of problems you are experiencing, the scareware
actually made or made up the problems. If you are daft enough to actually give these people your bank account information, they will have that hostage as
well. If that is not enough of a slap in the face, buying the software never changes or fixes the state
of your system and your computer will need professional service to put it back to normal.
Generally speaking the only way I have found to successfully remove all traces of these attacks is a
full wipe of the hard drive and a reinstall of the operating system.
Spyware is by far the most lucrative way for hackers to make money. Spyware is meant to
not be noticed while it is on your computer since it is gathering information about you and sending it back to the writer of the code or it is redirecting all of your traffic through toolbars and browser hijacks. The best of these can get all of your information and you wont even know
you’ve been hacked. I would be willing to bet almost half of the computers here have some
kind of spyware on them right now.
A Trojan horse installs a backdoor which allows hackers to totally takeover your computer. Your computer will become unknowingly part of a denial of service
attack or used to send thousands of spam emails. Technically a virus, a
Trojan horse will generally try to not be noticed so will not usually do any
damage to your computer or make it run unusually. The FBI recently had to give 6 months warning before shutting down an
operation that had control of tens of thousands of computers to use for their
own nefarious ends.
A worm is also a virus that will generally be a Trojan horse but is designed to
spread itself to all the other computers on a user or
company's network.
Although not malware, things you do on social networks like
Facebook and other social sites, can give criminals most of the
information they need to commit identity fraud.
It is actually very easy and very cheap to be internet savvy and to
protect yourself and your data.
You do not need to spend a ton of money on an antivirus. Most free antivirus programs are quite adequate for blocking everyday virus attacks. An
expensive antivirus can only give you a minimum of extra antivirus protection. The main thing to
remember is no matter how much you pay for an antivirus if you are on a site the first day a new virus
is out, you are going to get it since none of the programs will have the virus definition updated for up to ten hours after a new virus hits the internet.
Also most of the mainstream antivirus programs like McAfee or Norton have become bloated system hogs that are dreadfully complicated for most people to
understand and run. With that said a good antivirus program will keep you safe from most all known
viruses, Trojan horses and worms. Last on the subject of viruses, pay attention to what you are clicking on,
most viruses have to be executed.
There are some very good spyware programs and I recommend using them for spyware
scanning. Most spyware is not technically a virus and it will not register on an antivirus
program. Remember this is the category that makes hackers the most money so by its very nature it attracts the best programmers. Run
your preferred spyware program regularly and make sure it is updated before you run it.
Scareware is the biggest pain in the but of all of the categories. It will usually pop up in a window that
looks like its part of your system telling you you have to update, or restart, or any mundane computer
operation that you have done a hundred times. Since it is made to look and act like your system, it is
almost impossible for the average user to know they have just infected their computer. The program will give you a myriad of warnings in the jist of “your pc has registry errors, viruses, etc.”, and the only way to fix this is to buy “X” program. The program will have a name like “Antivirus 2013” or “Windows
antivirus”. If you are getting this message you are already infected. No programs will tell you this is an issue until it is too late. Your only protection against
this kind of attack is your wits. Pay very good attention to anything you click on while you are on
the internet!
Safely following the simple advice I have given so far is a great first step in assuring you will not get
your identity stolen. There are also steps to take to make sure your
information is not easily accessible to thieves while you use social
media such as facebook, twitter and various instant message services.
Secure Yourself and
be Aware
Personal Information
Never post your personal information publically. Most
social sites or messaging sites ask you to post things like name,
age, where you live, work, etc...this is not a requirement
and it is best to use generalizations Like first name only. The more information you
put out about yourself the easier you make it for identity thieves.
When using instant message services do not accept incoming file
requests from people you do not know and make sure if you do
accept one you are actually talking to whom you think you are. A good
hacker may be in control of a friends computer.
Laptops/TabletsIf you have a laptop that you frequently use on
public networks make sure you have the file sharing option turned off. If your are using
your laptop on a public network and it starts behaving abnormally, disconnect immediately and give your computer a scan for attempted
intrusions. A good hacker will get right by most firewalls quickly and easily so this is an area I
leave up to the individual. In my experience the added hassle of not being able to easily
connect to networks is not worth the minimal protection of hardcore firewalls. So if you use a lot of public networks a firewall will add to your safety at the expense of being more difficult to setup and use, but nothing will keep you safer
than being aware.
Personal FilesPersonal files that have sensitive
information should be kept on a detachable thumb drive or hard drive. You can also encrypt your
files but the first time you encrypt a folder or file, you should back up
your encryption certificate. If your certificate and key are lost or
damaged and you do not have a backup, you won't be able to use the files that you have encrypted.
BackupBacking up your personal data is not very difficult. It may take some time to
setup but once your setup for backups doing them regularly should be
easy.
CarboniteNot to sound like a
commercial, but of all the computer services that
companies want you to pay for this is one that is worth
every penny. If you have Carbonite your backup is
already done and you need not pay attention to this
next bit.
OrganizeBefore setting up a backup,
identify the files that you want backed up and try to get them all into a central location, such as, a
specially named folder or your documents folder. All address book and email programs will have an import/export feature
that will give you a backup file of everything currently in your
contacts and email
Do It!Once you have taken the time
to identify what files are important to you and have organized them in a central
location, back them up! Invest in a backup device
such as a thumb drive, external hard drive or
dependable cloud space such as charter cloud drive and use
it!
CareCare for your computer with regular
maintenance. Depending on the amount you use your computer, at intervals of one week to
once a month you should run a virus scan, spyware scan and empty your temporary files. Blow dust out of the case and off of the fans regularly as well. Listen for telltale signs of
eminent failure like a fan that is becoming very noisy, a cd/dvd rom drive that is leaving marks on disks or spinning very loud, or even a hard
drive that is starting to sound like it is grinding coffee. Replace mice and keyboards as needed,
they are cheap and cause more computer headaches than you would think if not operating properly. As with anything
mechanical maintenance will usually keep things running smooth.
Extra Tips from TimA few everyday things to
help you keep your computer running lean.
Be Patient!Even todays fastest computers still need time to load. Especially when first booting, a computer should be given time to fully load before using it. Some programs will require a few seconds before they are ready to use
as well. Watch your hard drive activity indicator, when it has stopped or
slowed to almost nothing you should be good.
Stop Clicking!When a computer is responding
slowly, clicking things will only make it slower! A computer, no matter how new or how fast, is
still at its core, a First In First Out adding machine. No matter how many new commands you give a computer it is still going to finish
the first thing in the stack.
Memory is Finite
Computers are being made with more and more
memory but a computer still runs best with as few things running in memory as you need. Your system tray is a good indicator of what is running on your
system.
What Can I do?Almost everything you install today will have some extra programs attached to it that you do not need
to install. This could be your camera, your mp3 player, your Garmin or Tom Tom. Be aware as you are installing required software for new devices of these extras they try to install. These extras will include resetting your homepage, a toolbar for
internet explorer, or a trial of an antivirus program. Where one or two extra programs
running will not hurt system speeds as you install more things performance will suffer until your
system is running terribly slow.
That’s A lot!We have covered a lot of
ground that may or may not be easy for you to
understand. I want to give a few live examples of the things I am talking about
then I am going to open to floor to your questions.
Extra Linkshttp://www.malwarebytes.org/
http://free.avg.com/us-en/homepagehttp://www.carbonite.com/en/v2/index
http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner
These are just a few helpful links feel free to contact me at [email protected] or 231-577-1090 if you have
any questions or would like help with anything Thanks, Tim.