An e-mail from your bank, asking you to change your online password for security reasons, may actually be a fraud, sent by a criminal hoping to access your account।
A file attached to an e-mail from a friend may be, in reality, a destructive computer virus, sent without your friend’s knowledge।
And the 15-year-old girl your teenaged daughter has befriended online could be, in truth, a 45-year-old male child molester।
These are just three examples of the many threats you and your family face on the Internet। Hacker attacks, spyware, worms, identity theft, pornographic spam, privacy intrusions—these, too, are now everyday occurrences online.
Just how risky is the Internet today? Consider the following:
• The number of fraudulent e-mail messages—known as phishing attacks, which are designed to steal critical data (such as bank passwords) from consumers and businesses—increased more than 1,000% from January to June 2005, according to an IBM report। Losses resulting from phishing scams range from $500 million to $1 billion per year, as reported by The Wall Street Journal.
• Eighty percent of users had some form of spyware on their computers in 2004, according to an America Online/National Cyber Security Alliance survey.
• While yesterday’s viruses were primarily destructive, more than half of the major viruses and malicious programs active during July-December 2004 were designed to steal confidential information, according to Consumer Reports.
• Approximately one in five youths aged 10 to 17 have been solicited for sex online, reports a survey from the U।S. Department of Justice’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.
Fortunately, there are many effective precautions you can take, as well as a variety of computer security tools available। The following is a hands-on, practical guide to protecting yourself and your entire family on the Internet.
If you connect an unprotected PC to the Internet, it will be attacked within 15 seconds, according to one industry estimate. While that may seem extreme, the truth is that an unprotected PC—particularly one with an always-on broadband connection—is an easy, desirable target for hackers, identity thieves, and others. After all, a compromised PC has monitary value to a hacker.
Before going online with a new PC, make sure it has, at a minimum, a PC firewall, antispyware, and antivirus software. The software should be fully installed and operational before you begin e-mailing or Web browsing.
The advice is the same if you’ve had your PC for a while: Install a firewall, antispyware, and antivirus software right away, if you haven’t done so already. These programs are designed to block most threats before they can infiltrate your computer. Once installed, perform antivirus and antispyware scans on any hard drives you use (including your computer’s internal drive as well as external backup drives). If the software finds viruses or spyware, delete or quarantine them immediately.
Make security scans a routine part of your PC maintenance. Each week, scan your hard drives for viruses, worms, spyware, and any other threats. Also, regularly back up your most important files to an external hard drive, CD, or other storage format, in case your PC’s hard drive does get infected or disabled. (See the sidebar “Backing Up Your PC” for details.)
Here, in further detail, are the essential security tools every computer should have:
• PC firewall. In architectural terms, a firewall is a fireproof wall that acts as a barrier between one part of a building and another. The firewall’s goal: to prevent a fire in one room from getting into another. Similarly, a PC firewall is software that acts as a barrier between your PC and the Internet. The PC firewall’s goal: to prevent Internet threats, particularly hackers intent on stealing your personal information or commandeering your PC, from getting into your computer.
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