Summary

With so much of our work and personnel life conducted online web safety is becoming paramount if we are to protect our data and identify. Please see below some general web safety awareness tips.

Photo Downloads

A user downloaded a set of photos of a pop icon for his desktop. Windows asked him to say yes to executing the file once downloaded. Assuming it was just a photo, he accepted. Within a couple of hours, the PC started to slow down to the point where it was unusable. Even after a “reboot” the PC was unstable. The free photo had a malicious payload attached that had taken over the PC to send out spam for the bad guys. The PC required the Operating System (OS) to be reloaded, the user had lost the day and all personal settings on the PC.

Don’t open unexpected emails form non-contacts, if an email brings news thats seems too good to be true, then it probably is! If it promises to enhance parts of your body, it wont. If it promises a easy mortgage, you would be better visiting your high street bank. If unsure ask five friends, chances our some of them have received the same spam emails and you know to mark them as “spam”.

Free Software

You can obtain free software which comes as a single software package. However most times free software comes bundled with other unwanted malicious programs. Don’t be so keen to use google search for everything, bookmark sites that you know and trust. Also make sure anti virus and OS’s have been updated and patched accordingly before clicking the download button.

A new batch of spoof pop-ups offers to scan your device for infections and vulnerabilities for free. There are genuine free scans offered by Anti Virus (AV) software companies, however if you are not on a AV website then don’t take the bait. You could allow access to your device by clicking on this scans.

Privacy

Most free software and websites have a “opt in” or “opt out” policy. Don’t click or agree without reading the actual narrative. People often click on “agree” buttons without reading the text, sometimes you could be clicking to agree to spam or you could be clicking to agree not to receive spam. If you are clicking to agree to pages of legal jargon, learn from other mistakes. If the T&C’s are hard to understand, it is probably deliberate. If reading the T&C’s are not worth the hassle, don’t risk using the software.