Safe email habits

Recently a co-worker of mine brought me a copy of an email message he had supposedly received from his Bank. The email claimed that his account had some recent irregular activity. Apparently someone had tried to access his account from a different “ISP host”. The email went on to claim that he should confirm his account information by clicking on the links below. My co-worker brought me the email because he was unable to follow the links and knowing that I was good with computers, he wanted to know if I could “fix” the problem so he could verify his account information.
I took a look at the email and immediately felt like something was not right. First of all, banks, internet providers, investment brokers, etc. do not typically ask you to verify your information via the internet, especially by clicking a link through an email. Secondly, an ISP is an internet service provider, typically when someone speaks of an attempted attack they say an unknown IP (internet protocol) address, not an internet service provider. My immediate reaction was this was a phising attempt.

I quickly did a search and discovered I was right. This was an attempt by someone to steal this person’s personal account information. The fact that he couldn’t open the link probably saved him a lot of money and trouble. I told my co-worker that the email was a fake and that someone was trying to steal his information. I confirm with him that he never enter any information about his account. I then told him to call his Bank’s fraud department and I suggested he change his password just to be safe. Problem solved, but then I began to think about how awful this could have turned out if he had been able to follow that link. He could have lost money, had his identity stole all because he didn’t know some basic internet safety.

As a geek I spend a lot of my free time researching internet security issues, network security issues and digital forensic techniques. Now as you probably know if your read my “about” page I don’t necessarily work in the information technology field, this is strictly a hobby. Hey, I told you I was a geek what did you expect? Anyways, since I follow these topics pretty closely I know the do and don’t of the internet and unfortunately take for granted that others are less informed than me.
Let’s go over some simple things you can do to protect yourself. First if you get an email from someone asking for any type of personal information, user ID, passwords, Social Security numbers, etc. question the email validity. It doesn’t matter who the email is from, my co-worker’s email had a return address that looked real, even the IP address was right. It’s not hard for a professional criminal to spoof (fake) an email address. If you get an email from some one asking you to verify your information don’t click through the email, instead go to your web browser and go to the website and log in as normal. If it’s a website you don’t normally go to and you have forgotten the address call customer service, just never click through your email. Thirdly, if you think an email seems like it could be a fake or you just have funny feeling about it. Don’t shrug it off, trust your instincts, being a little paranoid can go a long way in protecting your information.

The best and easiest way to confirm your fears about an email is Google. That’s right Google; a Google search is a great tool to find out about other fake emails. That’s what I did with my co-worker, remember that “ISP host” well it was a long series of numbers and letters that was supposedly the “ISP host” number, so I type that number into Google and searched. There it was that exact combination of numbers and letters, found at Spam daily news, a website devoted to publishing spam attempts. When I clicked on the link there was the email message word for word, expect the name of the bank had changed. That’s how I knew this email was a fake.

So next time you check your email be sure to apply these safe email habits, make them part of your email checking routine and they will go a long way to protecting your personal information online.

Viruse protection for your computer

Today I thought I would talk about viruses of course I’m going to talk about the types that affect our computers. Well to start if you us a computer it’s a good idea to have a virus scanner. Now there are some very good virus scanners out there from Norton and MacAfee if you don’t mind spending a little money. You should by able to pick one up for under $50 and its well worth it. Just keep it to one virus scanner per computer. A lot of people think more virus scanners the better, more than one will just slow your computer down. However if you are strapped for cash than I have the virus scanner for you, and as always it’s available for Windows, Macs, and Linux computers.

The software is called ClamAV, I’ll put the download links at the bottom of the page because their different links depending on your operating system. So why do you need a virus scanner? Well there a few reasons, computer viruses can do all sorts of bad things to you and your computer. Some will just become an annoyance, like shutting down your computer or maybe your “e” key won’t work anymore. These types of viruses can become real annoying, real faster. Other viruses can destroy data on your computer causing programs to stop working or worst, lose your family photos. Then there are the real bad viruses. Those that can let someone take control of your computer, to either steal data or use you computer to send spam mail. So that is way you should use a virus scanner, at least once in a while.I know some of you out there are Apple Mac or Linux users and you are probably thinking “I’m safe, there are no viruses that affect my computer.” For the most part that is true. Those of us that us an operating system other than Microsoft Windows are very lucky that we don’t have the same computer virus problems that our Window using brethren do, but don’t think it can’t happen. Microsoft Windows is the most vulnerable to viruses because it is the most common operating system in use. Virus writers want to target the largest group to increase their chance of achieving their goals. However in the past few years Apple Mac has become more and more popular and Linux is becoming a more mainstream operating system. It’s only a matter of time before all of us are affected by computer viruses. So it’s a good idea to start planning now.I suggest if you don’t have an anti-virus program or if the one you have is on the older and you don’t keep up with the updates. Updates? Yes, new viruses are released all the time you need to update you virus scanning software for it to find the new viruses. Anyways I suggest Clam anti-virus (ClamAV) because it’s free and you can download a version for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Other than that its pretty much the same as the ones you buy.

Install the program, update you virus list, and scan your computer. If you are a Windows user I would suggest updating and scanning you computer weekly at a minimum. The more often the better, but it usually takes a long time so once a week is better than not at all. Mac and Linux users I would suggest updating and scanning your computers monthly. Since there currently no known viruses for those operating systems you don’t need to be as concerned as Window users. Oh, and as I mentioned before if you have more than one virus scanner on your computer its not doing you any good. Especially if their not up to date. All they are doing is slowing down your system, get rid of them. Just keep one and keep it up to date. Okay, I’ll put links down below for ClamAV and I hope everyone has a virus free winter.

Windows ClamWin
Mac OSX ClamXAV
Linux ClamAV

Protecting our kids online

So today I’m going to talk about internet safety, and protecting your family when they are online. To start off I’m going to cover only the real basic elements, I will be covering more in depth topics in future postings.

So where to start? Well let take a look at where your family computer is. A lot of people want to let their kids have their own computer in their room. I think that’s mistake number one especially if your kids are younger. The first and most important step to protecting your kids online knows what they are doing online. Keeping the family computer in an open place lets you keep an eye on their activities. I don’t mean spying on them; we’ll get to that later. I mean your kids aren’t going to do something they don’t want you to see, if you could walk through the room at any moment. Now I know this won’t work for everyone, but I think this really is one of the easiest ways of keeping your kids in check on-line.

Okay, but I work so the kids are going online when I’m not home. Well that brings me to my next point, “user rights”. All modern operating systems have some form of user right management. Typically you either have administrator rights, meaning you can do pretty much anything or user rights, meaning you can only do what the administrator lets you do. I know most of you have all ready set up multiple users on your computers so that everyone can have their favorite picture on their desktop, but what about the user rights? Your kids shouldn’t have administrator rights, they don’t need them. If they want to install a game, it should be a game that you know about, right? So that’s step two, give yourself, spouse, and maybe the older kid (16+) administrator rights, but if you’re under 16, then you’re just a user. Now you have much more control over your kid’s online activities and computer activities in general.

These are very basic and simple methods of protecting your kids online. Like I said early I will provide more detailed and in depth methods in future posts.