HumanReady » malware http://blog.humanready.com housewife's and business owner's guide to today's technology world Wed, 18 Nov 2009 07:21:40 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8 en hourly 1 Good time of day from the Bayarea – wherever you are! http://blog.humanready.com/2009/06/09/hello-world/ http://blog.humanready.com/2009/06/09/hello-world/#comments Tue, 09 Jun 2009 06:24:20 +0000 Nick R. http://blog.humanready.com/?p=1 And so we begin. As of a few weeks ago an unusual spike in viral activity was witnessed and felt by many computer users. Beware: due to a couple of new modifications of the rouge anti-spyware, a lot of people are getting infected every day. Simply put, a virus on your computer that tends to behave just like an antivirus faking the appearance of firewalls , security centers and common anti-spyware modules. It would show you how many “infections” you computer is subject to and your every click – be it in or out of the program window – will take you to their website prompting for payments in order to make disinfection possible. Ironically enough, what it’s telling you is true… to a certain degree… And that is to say that the annoying pest itself is what’s infecting your computer. I’ve had people who’d paid hundreds of dollars this way before they realized something was wrong. The above can be a result of not having proper security in place, such as anti-virus, anti-spyware and firewall shields, security updates for operating systems, not having the PC maintained for an extended period of time. All of this combined will surely get you in trouble, while when only some of the above is true, it will likely create a security vulnerability.

Tips of the day.
To avoid falling prey to scammers make sure you always remember the following:

1. The very first question that you should ask yourself when in doubt is whether you’re dealing with something that you recognize and have installed yourself or not. And act accordingly, of course.

2. Watch out for security certificates reports on every page that involves sensitive data transaction (this includes credit card numbers, logins, passwords and any other personal information). Every such transaction must only begin and continue on web pages with the address starting with “https”. And every such page must be properly digitally signed.

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