Transcript Document

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/Tablets
If 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 Files
Personal 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.
Backup
Backing 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.
Carbonite
Not 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.
Organize
Before 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!
Care
Care 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 Tim
A 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 Links
http://www.malwarebytes.org/
http://free.avg.com/us-en/homepage
http://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.