Vital Internet Security Alerts and Information for the
everyday Non-technical Computer user, Internet User and
Web Surfer who just wants to be safe doing basic stuff
without the hassle of viruses, spyware, or worse.
I'm very pleased that you're here today,
and that you're
concerned about your computer security and family
Internet Safety. I look forward to your early return to
the Security Alert Blog.
Using the
Web
Feed or book-marking this page will make it a lot easier
for you to visit again.
The
Christmas Holiday is here and soon to be gone for
another year. I feel that themost
valuable giftsthat
could be given to anyone are love and friendship,
respect, and tolerance.
Can you imagine how much better this world would be if
everyone had it in them to bestow these gifts every day,
not just on an annual holiday?
I wish all of the best for you now and into the future.
Your support as followers of my web postings is
cherished. Thank you.
Richard Rossbauer
My Favorite
Posts from 2012
Be wary of Paint.net,
it could infect your PC with the FunMoods Malware
Here's a post you don't
want to miss - it's by Nichole Dean of Nichole on the
net.
She has been a successful net marketer for a good many
years with just loads of experience and she just made a
mistake that anyone of us could make.
She clicked a Download button in an email ad for
Paint.net, a product that interested her - but she
did it without thoroughly examining the ad content and
ended up with the Fun.Mood virus.
Fortunately for those of us who are on her blog mail
list, she posted a really great step-by-step story of
how it happened and best of all - how she painstakingly
removed it from her PC.
July 9, 2010
Considerations for Avoiding Current security Threats
There aren't many people who have a PC or Mac computer
connected to the Internet that aren't aware of Computer
Viruses.
Generally, PCs are targets of most of the more than
280,000 currently recognized viruses.
Macs don't become infected with the PC viruses designed
to exploit vulnerabilities of the Microsoft Operating
System. However, Macs are still targets of cyber
criminals and it is possible for an Apple Macintosh to
get a virus. But the likelihood of an Apple Macintosh
user getting a virus when compared to a Microsoft
Windows user is very little to none.
In fact, there are many Apple Macintosh users who still
don't even run an antivirus protection program.
But, believe it or not, in spite of all of the recent
media coverage and even newscaster hysteria about the
Conficker worm, Stuxnet, and more recently,
Flame, there are many ordinary computer users who
have no current protection against any kind of malware,
especially the latest versions and iterations of these,
and older viruses.
So, what are the latest threats and where can we go to
identify them? The answer to this question is in my
free report -
... where you'll find links to a half dozen or more
authority resources with lists of today's threats
and guidance in avoiding them, and even help in removing
them if you are already infected.
How
many offers for Viagra or Cialis appeared in your mail
today?
Only six showed up in my email, but that is for a
Saturday.
Normally there are twice that number. And ED drugs are
not the only offers -foreign pharmacies offer to save me
hundreds of dollars on all of my prescription medicines.
I'm sure there are legitimate off shore suppliers, but
I'm not experienced enough in recognizing the spammers
to even consider taking a chance on their email offers.
One of my favorite experts on Internet security is
Brian Krebs.
His recent article on "Rogue Pharmacies" puts a
bright light on the malicious software and "Pharm spam"
epidemic that exists today.
It's enough to scare me away from answering, or clicking
on any of the links in those suspicious daily email
offers.
And by the way, I always hesitate to open any email that
is presented in html (not plain text), unless I'm
absolutely familiar with the source/sender.
Much of the
phishing email in circulation is purposely designed
to appear as if it comes from legitimate sources like
your bank, a shipper like FedEx or UPS, the FBI, and
other common and easily recognized names.
Reminder about Why Strong Passwords are so
Important
One of my most interesting
and reliable sources for learning about the latest nasty
stuff taking place on the Internet is Brian Krebs' Blog "KrebsOnSecurity"
While reading through his blog posts recently, one of
the headlines attracted my attention - "Hacked
Inboxes Lead to Bank Fraud".
The meat of his post described exactly what happened to
us, a small business, as I reported in my March 30th
post - even to the contents of the email sent by a
hacker to one of our local banks from our email address
- using our email service which the hacker then
disabled.
Read Mr. Krebs post here - "Hacked
Inboxes Lead to Bank Fraud" and when you get to the
part where the Hacker's email is described, you'll see
why our local banker was astute enough to be suspicious
and contact us for verification.
Worse still, of the 3 examples cited in Mr. Kreb's blog
post, one of the banks failed to challenge that email.
The Bad grammar and poor punctuation should have raised
the alarm for any trained and responsible bank employee.
Mr. Krebs further points out that "Hacked and phished
email accounts increasingly are serving as the staging
grounds for bank fraud schemes targeting small
businesses. The scams are decidedly low-tech and often
result in losses of just a few thousand dollars, but the
attacks frequently succeed because they exploit existing
trust relationships between banks and their customers".
Which is a call to action
to reread my last post –"Does
Your Password Pass the Test?", and get some
expert guidance on creating your own Strong passwords.
When was the last time you reviewed your passwords?
Maybe now's the time to take a new look.
TRY THIS TEST >>
http://howsecureismypassword.net/
We
didn't realize our email password had been cracked,
until...
...on a recent Friday morning, we received a 'phone call
from a local Bank Manager asking if we had just made an
email request for the balance in our account.
This was from a bank where we did not have an
account.
A short time later, we realized that our incoming email
had stopped - no messages since around the time the Bank
Manager called us.
We contacted our eMail Service Provider and learned that
our password had been compromised and replaced by the
Hacker, who also installed a redirect code that
diverted all of our incoming email to his
private Gmail address.
Looking back at this episode, it became apparent that
our password for this email account was weak -
very weak, as a matter of fact.
The eMail Service Provider helped us clean up the mess
and guided us in restoring our email service with a much
stronger - very much stronger password.
What did we learn?
One - you can't be complacent or
unconcerned about the way things are when it comes to
your computer and Internet security. You must review and
update regularly
Two - hackers and crackers have
software that can decipher your simple keywords at cyber
speed
Three - our computers are being
bombarded constantly by non-human attackers.
"Incapsula, a cloud-based, website security and
performance company, recently did a study of 1,000 of
their customers to determine who or what was visiting
their sites. The results were rather astounding.
More than half (51%) of their client’s website traffic
was non-human including hackers, spambots,
scrapers and spies of sorts collecting proprietary
business information and
customer data."
You should read the rest of the post –"Does
Your Password Pass the Test?", and get some
expert guidance on creating your own Strong passwords
When was the last time you reviewed your passwords?
Maybe now's the time to take a new look.
TRY THIS TEST >>
http://howsecureismypassword.net/
Feb 1, 2012
Is
That Returned eMail really Something You Sent?
Have you noticed how cleverly the
cyber thieves are wording their phishing emails, lately?
Have you really sent all of those emails that were
bounced - with as many as a dozen daily notices ending
in your mailbox with subjects like these-
* Returned mail: see transcript for details
* Undelivered Mail Returned to Sender
I'm sure you noticed that each one of these messages has
an attachment that you are encouraged to open.
Don't Open
It!
- those emails appear to have been sent from locations
overseas, and who knows what malware they will put on
your computer. I don't know what those attachments
contain because I never clicked on them.
Threats to our online security are always with us but
aren't always easy to recognize. The cyber crooks are
sophisticated - and devious. They understand human
emotions like fear, anxiety, and apathy and continually
design - and redesign their phishing emails to trap us
into exposing our personal and even our financial
information.
I'm leaving the "EVERGREEN"
posts here as reminder Alerts to a variety of recent
phishing practices to help us recognize, or become
suspicious of similar messages that can appear in our
mail boxes.
... Richard
EVERGREENInternet Social
Media and your kids Safety- are they at risk?
As a parent, grandparent, and now a great-grandparent, I've
watched more than a dozen children learn to socialize with
other kids - it's part of growing up.
As grown-ups, we socialize in many ways. We tweet, we make
friends on facebook, we Stumble, Digg, make videos to
share on YouTube, and look to make friends on even more Social Media sites .
Social networking sites are fun and children want to participate
in them, too, but they do present some potential dangers.
With the popularity of social networking sites, here are some
words of caution.
As a parent, the very first thing we should do is teach our children
about the possible dangers that exist on the Internet, particularly
about situations that might crop up on a social networking website.
This free article highlights some of the more Important subjects to
review with our children
- You can read it in abut two minutes
I accept that any one who spends
much time surfing the Internet for information, and
leaving a name and email address to have access to
it -
-
is going to be added to more and more email lists,
and receive more and more 'follow-up' emails. That's
fair,
But what really aggravates me is the emails from unknown
sources (SPAM) that appear to be stoppable by sending a
reply with REMOVE typed into the Subject line.
What a farce! This morning alone I did the "REMOVE'
routine for 7 of those messages and EACH ONE
resulted in an 'Undeliverable' message form our ever
there 'Postmaster in the sky"
From now on, every unsolicited email that offers the
'reply routine' will be deleted using the REPORT AS SPAM
option in my email service.
(Probably won't do much good, but it'll make me feel
better)
EVERGREEN
McAfee
Labs Stinger* Updated thru Dec
2012
If
you don't have a Virus Protection program yet, here's an
Emergency Step you should take,
Right Now!
McAfee offers a FREE Virus Scanning program named
STINGER™.
It's a great backup tool when, for example,
your computer is infected with a
virus and you can't go online
for an update, or even use
your existing anti-virus
program. If you saved the latest
version of McAfee Labs Stinger
to a CD or flash drive, you
could disconnect from the
Internet and run a scan or two
with Stinger, which currently
searches for
thousands of
viruses, Trojans and variants!
*Stinger is a standalone
utility used to detect and
remove specific viruses. It
is not a substitute for full
anti-virus protection, but
rather a tool to assist
administrators and users
when dealing with an
infected system. Stinger
utilizes next-generation
scan engine technology,
including process scanning,
digitally signed .DAT files,
and scan performance
optimizations. It detects
and removes threats
identified under the "List
Viruses" icon in the Stinger
application.
... Richard
If you found our Security
Alert Blog interesting, please
subscribe to our RSS feed!
EVERGREENInternet
marketers and webmasters -
Who's stealing your stuff?
"How Would YOU Feel ...if you were surfing the Web and
suddenly saw an exact copy of something you created, and
to which you own the legal rights of use, on someone
else's web site? Including, but not limited to ...
* YOUR Articles,
* YOUR Web Site Designs
* YOUR Web Site Copy
* YOUR Sales Letter Copy
* YOUR Ebooks or Reports
* YOUR Ad Copy
* YOUR Software
* YOUR Other Products
* YOUR Graphics & Images
* YOUR Newsletters & Ezines
How would you reclaim your copyrighted
property?
Wouldn't you like to know how to get your stolen
Intellectual Property removed from the web without
hiring a Lawyer?
You'll be pleased to learn that there is a brand new
ebook where you'll discover how you can "Beat Web
Thieves at Their Own Game!"
Actually, you really need this ebook BEFORE your
own intellectual property (or copyrighted material) is
stolen so you can take the necessary steps to protect
yourself, now.
Who wrote the book? - jlScott. The author is Director of
the International Council of Online Professionals (i-Cop)
and now the
ChamberofCommerce-Ontheweb.com.
Included in her ebook is a recent case history
documenting how she used her expertise to have a blatant
case of plagiarism (complete sections of the i-Cop
website stolen and republished word for word) removed
within a matter of hours!
There's stuff in this ebook that has already helped me
prepare to take action against the thieves who have
copied my property and even shut down a couple of my
sites -
-some of which is the included word-for-word,
fill-in-the-blanks samples to use in corresponding with
the plagiarists, their ISP's, web hosts, and even their
lawyers, if necessary.
You'll want to take advantage of the low "Public Launch
price" before it goes up in the near future. Click on
over to learn how and where you can get immediate access
to your ebook -
"Beat Web Thieves at Their Own Game!"
Don't
hesitate to express
your views and opinions on my Security Alert Blog and Cyber
Security Alert postings (easily done by clicking on
the highlighted 'COMMENT' |
at each post. Watch for postings on fraud alerts,
virus alerts, worm alerts, Internet Security alerts, security scams,
parental controls, online predators, net security, and more. Be sure to visit our
Firewalls-and-Virus Protection website for even more help
Evergreen
Free report -
"Avoiding Current Security Threats"
There are still some unresolved issues with the
Conficker worm and Cyber criminals are flooding the
Internet with bogus "Anti Virus and Anti Spyware"
programs designed to steal your personal information,
add your computers to world wide "botnets", and generally
prey on unsuspecting web surfers with unprotected
computers.
But you can take steps to avoid these security threats,
and I have outlined them in a special report you can have
for
Free.
This report is an update and a bit of an overview of the
information published in my newsletters, blog and
websites.
It covers the basics of what to look for and
how to prepare your computer to avoid the next high risk
threat. It's a quick download (PDF file) which you
can obtain by going to the registration page and leaving
your email address so that the download instructions can
be sent to your email inbox.
Get Free Report here and share this web address with
your friends so the emails you get from them are clean
and free of malware.
Please accept our
INVITATION
to Help Parents Teach Their Kids to be Safe Surfers –
an Invitation to Help other Parents, Grandparents and Guardian by Sharing Your
Experiences of
Teaching Your Children To Be Safe When
They Were learning to Surf
the Internet. Please Tell Us
About It HERE
Contact Me Unlike the
people who use
Twitter to tell you they've
walked their dog, I Tweet
Only the things that I believe
all my followers will find useful.
So, grab a Twitter account and
Follow me on Twitter
Checkout the eBook "How to
Protect Your Privacy and Security
Online"
CLICK HERE for the Security Tips ebook, bonus
PC Security ebook
and
Free Resale Rights
Instant
Access - Instant Download - Anytime of the day or night
(These are electronic books that you
will download upon purchase...there will be no book mailed to your
address)
Disclosures
Material Connection
You should assume that the owner of this website has an affiliate
relationship and/or another material connection to the providers of
goods and services mentioned in this message and may be compensated when
you purchase from a provider. You should always perform due diligence
before buying goods or services from anyone via the Internet or offline.
-- (Terminology used with permission of
Ken McArthur)
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If
you don't have a Virus Protection program yet, here's an
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