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In the world of James Bond, every bad guy is
an evil genius. On the web, hackers,
spammers, and phishers may be evil, but
they're not required to be geniuses. They
can make a healthy living just by exploiting
known security holes that many users haven't
bothered to patch. Or by relying on the
propensity of millions of people to do
things they've been told over and over not
to do.
The silver lining is that, in order to avoid
these common attacks, you don't have
to be a genius either. Just take a few
simple precautions and you will avoid most
of the bad stuff out there:
Safe Emailing
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Any email message from an ‘official’
technical source that ever asks you
to reply with private information from their
own system is a scam. There are no
exceptions to this rule. If they need the
information that means they don’t already
have it which should set alarm bells
ringing!
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If you get an email claiming to be from your
bank or any other institution you do
business with, and it asks you to log in
with a link, you should be suspicious. HTML
messages can disguise a link’s real
destination. The safest course is not to
click from the message, but to pull open
your Web browser and type in the bank’s
website address yourself.
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If you do click on a link from an email,
check the address at the top of your Web
browser to make sure it’s the site you
expected to see.
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Be wary of opening random attachments or
links - even if it’s from a friend or family
member. Especially if it’s supposed
to be something funny. Viruses can sometimes
read a whole address book and email everyone
in it. If the wording of the message doesn’t
sound like your friend or family member,
call or email them and ask if they really
sent it.
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Pretty much nothing you read in a chain
letter is true or helpful. This includes
chain letters warning about viruses or
Internet scams. Very often the pages where
these links terminate contain viruses or
scams themselves. Do not pass them on. If
you’re truly in doubt, look it up on
http://snopes.com
- this is a handy reference site for chain
letters, hoaxes, and urban legends.
Safe Web Browsing
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If you are using Windows, ensure you are
running antivirus software and that the
updates and definitions are up to date.
This is not optional. If you are a Net
Technical Solutions supported customer, then
we will take care of this for you as we are
partnered with Trend Micro and Sophos to
deliver a solution that is suited to your
business. We can also work with other
leading brands of AV software if you already
have something in place.
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If you use Internet Explorer as your daily
Web browser, upgrade it to Internet
Explorer 8, which is far more secure.
(Windows is probably nagging you to update
it already!)
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If you are even more concerned about
browsing safely, it may be better to use a
browser such as Firefox or Safari
which offer greater security and reliability
and reserve IE only for sites that strictly
require it.
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Don't use the same password for important
things - banking, email, medical
information, etc. or for random things such
as forums or social sites. Ideally, every
site that contains important information
about you should have a different password,
so if one gets compromised you're not at
risk everywhere.
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Don't ever use your birthday, your kids'
birthdays, your address, or standard English
words for important passwords. Even if you
use the number 1 in place of the letter i or
a $ instead of S and such. Nowadays everyone
does that, and you would not believe how
fast a modern password cracking program will
guess your password.
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Using a password manager helps a lot. It
will make up a different random password for
every site and then remember it for you. For
Windows users, KeePass is free and
reputable.
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Any bank or payment site should be a
secure Web site and you will see a gold
padlock next to the address bar on Internet
Explorer:
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The difference between "blue" and "green" simply depends upon
whether the site paid to have extra information on their security
certificate.
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Seeing the padlock or blue/green button basically means two things:
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The domain name you're
looking at submitted paperwork to an Internet authority that they
really are who they say they are; and
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The page you're seeing, and anything you send back to them, is
encrypted. Basically, nobody in a dingy London basement can
intercept the Web traffic and steal your credit card numbers.
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The second one of those is more important. Yes, you can trust the
encryption. Nobody can break it. As long as the site is secure,
you are generally a lot safer sending your credit card number over
the Internet than you are handing it to a waiter at a restaurant to
swipe in the back.
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Whether you can trust the company you're giving your
information to is another question. It's mostly outside the scope of
this article, but the credit card companies have lots of rules in
place to say that anyone storing your number has to keep it
extremely safe. If they screw up, they'll lose their ability to take
credit cards, so most real businesses take this seriously.
We hope you find these hints and tips useful and thought-provoking. As always our support team
is on hand to talk you
through any of the above and help ensure your network remains as
safe and secure as possible. |
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