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Staying Safe on the Internet

"CyberCrime"

how someone can rob you or your business blind from halfway around the world with total anonymity and safety.

Todays cyber criminals don't use a gun, they don't have to look you in eye, and they use software instead instead of weapons, and once they get you to open that infected eMail, or open that infected file, they own your computer. From that point on, anything you do on your computer they will see, all your passwords, all your credit card numbers. The horror stories of businesses that have had ALL of the money in their checking, savings and their lines of credit emptied over a weekend. And 99% of the time, none of it can be recovered because it's gone through about 5 or 6 oversea's banks and then turned into cash. All of this over a weekend, and on Monday you have no money. Don't expect your insurance company to help you if you did not use due diligence to protect yourself. The bank won't help you because the transfers and the purchases were made from your computer. So it pays to protect yourself.

The first and foremost way to protect yourself is to pay attention to where you go on the internet, of all the computers I have cleaned of malware the most common denominator (almost 95%) has been three types of sites:

FREE GAME SITES
FREE MUSIC AND MOVIE SITES
PORN SITES

But you say you don't go to these sites, you use per to per file sharing (Kazaa, Limewire, Shareaza, BitTorrent, etc), they can be just as bad as the free sites. So where do you get your free music and movies? If you want free you are going to take chances. One thing that I will never understand is why businesses allow their employees unlimited internet access.

So the first rule to protect yourself is to be internet smart, don't visit sites that might serve up malware. If your children want to download music and movies, or play games on the internet, get them their own computers.

 

ALWAYS use a Hardware based firewall, Do Not Trust Software Firewall's


Always have a current updated AntiVirus product.
Keep your system up to date with patches.

The first 4 (free) tools (below) should be installed on EVERY Computer:

#1 OpenDNS (will stop you from going to known bad sites)

#2 Immunet Protect

#3 Web of Trust

#4 Microsoft Security Essentials

#4 Blue Coat K9 Web Protection To protect children from pornography.

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No advertising, just security updates and virus alerts.

 

OnLine Scanners

Microsoft Online System Scanner (Also fixes registry problems)

Secunia Online Software Inspector (You should run this monthly)

ESET Online Scanner

F-Secure Online Scanner

BitDefender Online Scanner

Trend Micro's HouseCall


Downloadable Scanners

Not a substitute for full anti-virus protection, but rather as tools to assist administrators and users when dealing with an infected system

F-Secure BlackLight Root-Kit Scanner

McAfee Labs Stinger

Spybot - Search & Destroy


Live CD Solutions

avast! BART CD

AVG Rescue

Avira Rescue

BitDefender Rescue

Dr. Web Rescue

F-Secure Rescue

Kaspersky Rescue

Panda Rescue

LinuxDefender Live!

http://www.livecdlist.com

Burn the image to a CD or DVD

After you’ve download the file, burn the image to CD-Rom or DVD. If you don’t know how to burn an image file to CD or don’t know whether you have a program to do so, download something like Ashampoo Burning Studio Free. Once you’ve installed it, start the program and select “create/burn disc images,” and then “burn ISO.” Locate the .iso file you just downloaded, and follow the prompts to burn the image to the disc.

Incidentally, if your computer is a netbook and doesn’t have a CD-Rom drive — or if you’d just prefer to boot the rescue disc from a USB drive — you can create a bootable USB/flash drive using the same .iso image by downloading and running this free tool here.

 

Test Suspicious Files

Virustotal

Norman SandBox

 

Other Suggestions:

Set your default search engine to Google

Set your default Home Page(s) & lock them so they can't be changed

 

Reading Room:

Brian Krebs on Security

Independent comparatives of Anti-Virus software (who really is the best)

Home Computer Security

Home Network Security

Recognizing and Avoiding Email Scams

FBI Publications - A Parent's Guide to Internet Safety

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/security,1

freshnews.org

 

Other Neat Stuff:

Unstoppable CD/DVD Copier

 

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