The Naples Daily News ran an article recently that offered
some tips to curb email hacking. Having
spent 25 years in the computer business I didn't hear anything new but it never
hurts to be redundant.
NEVER open an attachment from someone you don't know. If you are expecting an attachment from a
friend that is normally safe but.... keep in mind if it looks squirrely even
from a friend, don't open it. Email or
call your friend to determine if they
have sent you an attachment.
ALWAYS use a good quality anti-virus software. There are plenty of commercially available
programs but there are also good free programs. AVG, Trend Micro and Avast come to mind.
The Steve Gibson
website, www.grc.com has a link to his Shields Up program. This is a free probing (stop snickering) of
your computer for security faults.
Gibson has been around for ever and this is a well known, free tool. If it tells you that you are at risk, do
something about it. This is NOT one of
those bogus computer scans that finds 435,000 problems and for merely $29.98,
you can download their fix for these issues.
Avoid those programs at all costs.
Some of them will actually hijack
your computer and demand a ransom to get your computer functioning again.
BE AWARE than not all official looking communications are
actually from whom they claim to be. A
pretty computer savvy teen called me in a panic recently to tell me he got a
bright red screen claiming that Homeland Security had found child porn on his
computer and unless he immediately paid a $300.00 fine online, he would be
arrested. Not only that, it locked up
his computer so he could not use it. I
explained to him that it was a scam and I found the fix online for him. It took him two days but he finally got his
computer back from these scheming creeps who troll the Internet. His only crime was he assumed the site he was
downloading music from was legitimate.
Passwords should never be stuff you have put on social
media, like your high school, your dog, your wife (no reason those are listed
together, honest!) or names of your kids.
It is a major pain in the tush but keep your passwords random and long,
use upper and lower case and when the site will allow, throw in a symbol. None of this will deter the true hacker but
the malicious malcontents who are not truly talented, just vandals, will be
deterred.
Consider encryption software such as AxCrypt Take note, very carefully note of what you
set up as your password for your encrypted data because once it is encrypted by
a good software package, even the vendor can't get it open.
Lastly if you are
passwording or encrypting something that is important to your spouse or
business partner, provide them with the
means of getting to the data. A friend
dropped dead at age 40 while mowing his lawn.
He had passworded his accounting software for his small business. His wife did NOT have the password and could
not pay the bills or determine who owed her money. It took me a couple of hours to find a hack
for the program online and then an hour or so to break the password. I am in no way a computer savant, the tools for destruction are readily
available on the web and sometimes they can be used for benign purposes.
Wrapping it up, if you are targeted by one of the nefarious
commercial hacking groups, you will probably be hacked. These strategies will work for 90% of us who really have very little important
computer data to grab. Very little
being relative to a major corp with deep pockets, it is still an enormous inconvenience and financial hit to anyone who
is hacked.
The Internet is a jungle (why else the browser named
Safari) but you can protect yourself with a few very easy
precautions. DO THEM TODAY!
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