Liars and Scammers and Spam, Oh My!

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Dear Readers,
How are you doing? Hope all is well with you and your family, I am sorry I didn't inform you about my traveling to England for a Seminar.

I need a favor from you as soon as you receive this email, I misplaced my wallet on my way to the hotel where my money, and other valuable things were kept. Can you urgently assist me with a soft loan of $2,600 US Dollars to sort-out my hotel bills and get myself back home. You are the only one I can trust with this, please can this be between us? You have my word; I will refund you as soon as I return.

I will appreciate whatever you can afford, Let me know if you can assist, to enable me to send to you the details to use in sending the money through Western Union. All the best, Julia.

Cyber Crime: What Are the Threats?

Social engineering scams such as this ("phishing"), and other kinds of Internet fraud, have been earning liars and scammers worldwide more than $560 million last year. The take doubled what they earned in 2008, and show no sign of diminishing.

If you own a computer, chances are you’ve been affected in some way by cybercrime. One Central Jersey woman believes that her account was stolen while she was in an airport, using an open WiFi signal. The signal may have been an evil twin -- a fake WiFi signal set up to steal unsuspecting WiFi users’ passwords. Another possibility is that they were the victims of pharming, redirected from a real Web site they were visiting to a fake version, where spyware was installed on their computers to gather their e-mail account passwords, or worse, financial account passwords.

Cyber Knight Computer's Mike Beberman says as much as eighty percent of his in-store business involves removing viruses and spyware. He considers lack of protections the major threat to your machine and data.

Beberman says "Social networking has opened a whole new can of worms. You are allowing people to share your info. The games are essentially spyware... They don't ask--you give them access." Beberman does have a Facebook account but, he says, "I don't do the apps."

If you start seeing semi-clad women walking around your desktop or porn pop-ups and a message about how to remove them before your boss catches you, it's possible that the free virus scanner you downloaded from a pop-up ad was really scareware, a form of ransomware, holding your machine  hostage until you purchase their "antivirus protection."

According to ZDNet, almost half of all computers scanned were infected by malware of one kind or another. Even visiting legitimate Web sites or searching the Web for screensavers of your favorite celebrity can be dangerous. More than three quarters of the Web sites that have malicious code on them are legitimate sites, according to the software protection company McAfee.

What Can You Do?

Beberman recommends that computer users install an antivirus program and antispyware software and to update them every week. "No one product will keep everything out."

Also, "Don't click on anything unless you know what it is." If you get a pop-up asking you to "click here," he says, "You can leave it up and google it. When you click on them, they open the floodgates and can do a lot of damage."

Jason, a local software architect whose work involves high-clearance network security, says that besides phishing, weak passwords are the biggest problem for the average user. If your password is among the most popular passwords people use, it's a good idea to change it. He says building password muscle by using a combination of letters, numbers, and symbols. He recommends getting random strings of characters from random.org and storing your passwords in a password manager.

When visiting Web sites where you want your information secure, such as banking and shopping, he recommends adding an "s" to the "http" in the address line (i.e., https://). This will take you to a secure version of the site you are visiting and reduce the likelihood of being directed to a fake site.

About protection from viruses, Jason says, "Even with updated virus protections, at some point, you’ll get a virus. Big companies assume their computers will be affected. So the best thing is to use a good back-up system, like System Restore (for Windows) or Time Machine (for Mac) so that you can restore your computer to an earlier uninfected state."

His preferred operating system is Linux's Ubuntu, which he says is more stable and secure than proprietary operating systems.

However, he says, "The security battle is lost if someone else has direct access to your computer." That said, it's 10 pm, do you know where your computer and your kids (or parents) are? Your parents? And what are they downloading?

Next time: Zombies and botnets want your brain!