Phishing is the act of convincing or tricking a user into giving away personal information. Phishing can come in all kinds of flavors. They can come in e-mails saying you won something and all they need to process your winnings and have them ship it out to you is your name, address, credit card information, and maybe even your social security number (which you should NEVER give out online unless you know your information is being transferred over a secure encrypted server). They always promise they won’t charge anything to it, it’s just for security purposes (yea right).

You may be thinking, I’ll never be tricked by one of these foolish scams, but think again. As I said before, phishing comes in many different flavors. Say you got an e-mail from you bank stating that there has been strange activity on your account and they need to verify you information. So the e-mail asks you for your personal information such as your name, address, SS#, etc. DON’T GIVE IT TO THEM, because it probably is an impersonator pretending to be your bank. This has happened plenty of times and is one of the leading causes of identity theft.

First of all, your bank (if is a legitimate bank) will NEVER ask you input your personal information into an e-mail and send it to them.

Secondly, even if there is a link in the e-mail they ask you to click on to go to the banks website and fill in information, pay attention to the address bar and make sure it displays your banks url. And look closely because a lot of phishers like to disguise their url’s to look as if it were the real site.

• Eg. Real - Phisher -

For Internet Explorer user, their is a great phishing filter already included in the newest version (Internet Explorer 7) to help protect against being phished. You can download the latest version of IE from Download.com or Microsoft’s website directly. To make sure your Phishing Filter is turned on…

• Open your Internet Explorer
• Click Tools
• Hover over Phishing Filter
• When the pop-up menu shows up, the second option should be either “Turn On Automatic Website Checking” or Turn Off Automatic Website Checking”
• You want it to say “Turn Off Automatic Website Checking” because this means that it is already on.
• If it says “Turn On Automatic Website Checking” then click on it to turn it on.

For Firefox Version 2 or later users, the Phishing Filter is automatically activated. To test to make sure your Phishing Filter is on and working you can go to the site below. A warning dialog should appear and you can just click “Get me out of here” to exit the site.

• Firefox Phishing Test site

If the site doesn’t show the warning dialog, then make sure your phishing settings are on by doing the following in Firefox…

• Click Tools
• Click Options
• Click Security
• Here make sure the options “Warn me when site try to install add-ons” and “Tell me if the site I am visiting is a suspected forgery” are checked
• And under the “Tell me if the site I am visiting is a suspected forgery” option make sure the “Check using a downloaded list of suspected sites” option is selected. Firefox does a great job keeping the list of suspected sites updated.

A lot of Internet Security Suites, such as Norton, comes equipped with Phishing filters also.

1. Never have an internet connection w/o the presence of an ACTIVE Firewall and Anti-Virus
   • Viruses have evolved to where they don’t have to be directly downloaded and executed anymore. These days even having an active internet connection with no virus protection is dangerous whether your are downloading and executing anything or not.
2. Use Firefox or any browser other than Internet Explorer if possible
   • Virus developers focus on distributing their projects to as many computers as possible
   • Roughly 79% (http://www.upsdell.com/BrowserNews/stat_trends.htm) of surfers use Internet Explorer which makes IE the target browser for virus developers.
3. Don’t have your browser remember any passwords
   
   • Of course it may be a little quicker to access your online banking when your trusty IE browser automatically inputs your password, but those virus developers love to make those programs designed to sniff through your cookies to find that good ole’ username and password for their own ventures.
4. Never input private information (Real name, address, credit card info) into a site where there is no security lock present.
   • Eg. - or
5. Never give out your usernames and/or passwords to anyone.
   • When talking to people in chat rooms also be careful not to give anyone your real name or any revealing information.
6. Try not to use the same username and passwords for every login you have
   • It is much safer to use one username and password for you Online Banking, another username and password for your E-mail, another username and password for you myspace login and so on.
   • Using different usernames and passwords for your Online Accounts prevents hackers from possibly getting one username and password and logging in to all your accounts with that one username and password
   • The presence of dedicated servers in a web hosting deal ensure the safety of your domain registration as well as the uploaded status of web site design.
7. Never download anything that you haven’t researched first
   • Downloading something you know nothing about is a very serious risk to your computer. Make sure to do a quick Google search on any program you plan on downloading to see what other people have to say about it first.
8. When downloading and installing programs, don’t just install everything it tells you to in the installation.
   • Be sure NOT to install anything you may not want (such as yahoo toolbars, google toolbars, etc.) because they could come with unwanted adware or spyware that can be very annoying and possibly hazardous to your computer.
9. Always clear you Browsing History when finished surfing the web.
   • Delete cookies, history, temp files, form data, and passwords
     Firefox has a great feature where it can ask you to clear you Browsing History every time you close the browser.
10. Last but definitely not least, NEVER MAKE ARRANGEMENTS TO MEET ANYONE (in person) WHOM YOU MET IN A CHAT ROOM, MYSPACE, ETC.
    • This is very important for your own safety. Especially if you are under 18, but I personally don’t recommend anyone of any age to perform this type of arrangement. The only instance where I see that this may be appropriate is where you join an online dating community and you want to meet someone you met through the community. I have never been a part of any of these communities but I know that most of them are pretty strict about protecting their users, but by all means BE CAREFUL.
    • Parents please pay close attention to your children’s relationships with the people they meet on communities such as Myspace. From kids running away to be with people they met on the popular online communities, to pranks going too far and resulting in suicides, it all happens on Myspace and other popular online communities. Of course it is not the communities’ faults, but the careless people that your children could be associated with within the community is by far to blame.

In this day and age privacy is very important to everyone. When you surf the web maybe you don’t want the next person to see what sites you have been to. Whether it’s your banking sites or adult sites that you don’t want your children following in your footsteps. Whatever the reasons may be, there are ways of covering your tracks on the internet.

Clearing your browsing history is a great way to keep your private web surfing PRIVATE. In Internet Explorer 7, deleting you browsing history is as simple as…

1. Clicking Tools
2. Then click Delete Browsing History

From here you can delete a number of things like your History which is you previously visited sites’ urls, your Cookies which are basically small files that record information about you on the web (such as usernames, and login information). You can delete your Temporary Internet Files, which is a small cache that holds downloaded web pages and media so they can retrieve them faster in repeat visits. Passwords you tell Internet Explorer to remember can also be deleted from here. Lastly, Form Data can be cleared as well which is repetitive information you may have typed into forms such as applications or shipping information.

In order to keep your computer running at optimal performance, there are some things you should do on a regular basis from the time you pull it out of the box. You computer is a very fragile machine with a variety of components that work together to produce a users desired output. Computers allow people to do anything from writing school papers to downloading music to assisting in developing experimental aircraft in the United States Air Force. So as you can see computers hold a very special place in today’s society so it is very important to take good care of them.

There are a few important actions that MUST be completed even by the most casual computer user…

(Click on topic to learn more)

1. Disk Cleanup
2. Disk Defragment
3. Virus Scan

These are probably the 3 most important actions to perform on your computer on a regular basis to keep it running at peak performance.

Disk Cleanup clear your cookies, temporary internet files, empties recycle bin, compresses old files, and more. There are also other great programs out there (such as CCleaner, Cleanup Assistant, Zappit System Cleaner, and WinDirStat which are all free) to use for this that goes a little further and cleans your registry, shreds files to make them untraceable, and gives you more of a visual layout of your hard drive(s).

Disk Defragment involves moving files around on your hard disk in a more organized manor which helps the read/write heads on your disk(s) to save and retrieve files faster and more efficiently. Disk Defragmenting is an important thing to do because it keeps your hard disk(s) (which is where virtually ALL of your information is held) healthy and pro-longs the life of the drive(s). Alternatives to the Windows Disk Defragmenter are available a Download.com such as Auslogics Disk Defragmenter, and Perfect Disk8 which are free downloads.

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In order to complete the Virus Scan your must have an Anti-Virus program installed on your computer. Avast Anti-Virus and AVG Anti-Virus are two great free Anti-Virus programs but the free versions do not come equipped with firewalls. But don’t panic, because if you have Windows XP Service Pack 2 or higher, you have a great firewall already, just make sure it is up and running. (See Firewall Tutorial)

You may have heard people say that if you clear your cookies your computer will run faster. That may be true, but it’s not really that simple and straight - forward. A cookie is a little text file which your browser saves to your computer when you ask it (not necessarily with your permission always) to remember something.

Let’s say you sign into your e-mail and you check that little box under the password box that says “Remember Me on this Computer.” Well when that box is checked and you sign in your browser automatically saves your sign-in information to a folder on your computer (usually your cookies folder) where it looks for that information the next time you go to sign-in to your e-mail. Now one or two cookie files in your cookie folder is not going to have an effect on your computer’s performance, but after months or maybe years of not clearing your cookies may not sit too well with your hard drive.
It’s a good idea to clear your cookies for a couple of reasons…

• Security purposes
• Hard Disk Space

A hacker can possible get vital information from your cookie files, like your banking sign-in information for identity theft, or e-mail sign-in information to gain access to your precious love letters from your secret lover. Although cookies are generally very small
Clearing your cookies is actually very easy. Be sure to check out my Video Tutorial on Clearing Your Cookies.

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(Internet Explorer 7)

1. Open Internet Explorer
2. Click Tools
3. Click Internet Options
4. Under the Browsing History header Click Delete…
5. When the Delete Browsing History window pops up you have several options
6. It’s a great idea just to go ahead and Delete all… which will delete your Temporary internet files, Cookies, History, Form data, and passwords that you may have saved. But if you don’t want to delete everything you can just click Delete cookies…
7. Then Click Yes when it asks if you are sure you want to delete your cookies.

You’ve probably heard talk about someone can’t get their printer to work because they don’t have the correct drivers installed, or the DVD-ROM isn’t working because the drivers it came with were not meant for your new Windows Vista operating system.

A device driver is basically a small program of file that tells your computer and operating system how to communicate with the intended device. Usually when you go out and purchase a printer, web cam, or any computer peripheral or component, it comes with a cd. On the cd is the device software and drivers which are usually installed BEFORE you plug the device into your computer, or else windows will try to install the drivers for the device and the drivers that windows uses may not be the best drivers for the device.

It is also a great idea to check the manufacturer’s website to see if there has been any updated drivers released for your product before you install it.

The best way to keep your computer protected from viruses is to have…

· Anti-Virus

· Anti-Spyware

· Firewall

Having an anti-virus program installed and running on your PC is by far one the best virus prevention techniques. An anti-virus program constantly scans and monitors your computer for any suspicious files or activity. You can also schedule automatic system scans to automate your system security. Norton Anti-Virus and McAfee Anti-Virus are two great virus protection programs and they cost anywhere between $40 and $60. Avast develops a free anti-virus for home users and it is great virus protection for the budget shopper. Make sure to always have the anti-virus program running for complete protection.

Having a great firewall installed is another must have against virus protection. A firewall monitors all incoming internet traffic for suspicious or unknown activity.
Beginning with Windows XP (SP2) Microsoft began to provide a great built-in firewall.

Some manufacturers such as Norton and McAfee have developed Internet Security Suites which include the Anti-Virus, Firewall, and Anti-Spyware all in one program. It’s great to purchase a full Internet Security Suite because it can be a little easier to manage, but their are some pocket friendly programs such as Avast Anti-Virus and AVG Anti-Virus which both provide free home edition anti-virus programs. They don’t come equipped with firewalls unless you purchase the Internet Security Suite, but if you have Windows XP Service Pack 2 or higher then you already have a great firewall (see Windows XP Firewall Tutorial). all three programs work better together when there by the same manufacture, and it’s also easier to manage the different entities.

Spyware is classified as a program which is downloaded usually along with another program, that actually installs software which monitors and collects information for marketing research. Malicious spyware can be written and dispatch to computers to record information such as usernames, credit card numbers, passwords, etc. The program then sends all the information it collects back to the author.

Most spyware is not meant to be malicious, its usually used to gather marketing information, but some spyware is indeed created for purposes such as identity theft.

A great FREE tool that can be used to “Search and destroy” spyware is Spybot Search & Destroy.

Adware delivers unwanted advertising displays to your web browser window. In other words Adware programs initiate those annoying pop-ups on punching the monkey to win $1000 while you’re surfing the web. Adware is usually introduced to your computer through internet downloads such as freeware (free software). Before you go calling your lawyer to sue the publisher of that free game you downloaded, take another look and the EULA (End User License Agreement) in which you probably agreed to before you proceeded with the download. Yes you actually agree to download the bundled in adware.

Luckily adware generally doesn’t harm your system, rather it just tests your patience a little by providing loads of unsolicited advertising to your system.

A computer virus is a destructive program or application designed to replicate and spread throughout the computer on its on. Computer viruses can be contracted through opening e-mail attachments containing viruses, downloading infected programs from the internet (usually free programs), or from removable storage devices such as floppies, usb drives, etc. Make sure to only download stuff from reliable sources you trust. There are a few different types of viruses…

• Trojan Horses – these viruses pose as legitimate programs but are far from such. These viruses are usually designed to destroy data and can cause damage to hard disks. In modern terms Trojan Horses are not classified as viruses because they do not replicate or attach to other files, they work alone. They seem to be and work as the described application but they contain malicious code that gathers and records information by monitoring network behaviors.
• Computer Worms – these viruses are malicious programs the destroy the local computer by replicating until the disk space, memory, and other system resources have been consumed. These viruses are usually contracted through e-mail attachments the contain the virus.

• File Infectors – these are viruses that add their code to executable files such as word processor programs, spreadsheet apps, etc. After executing the file which contains the virus it then spreads to other executable programs causing havoc in the system.

• There are many more types but those are the main ones.

Some common symptoms of a computer who’s been compromised by malicious program(s) are as follows…

· System operations slows down greatly

· Hard Disk seems to be full even after files have been deleted

· The computer will not boot and files (such as the mbr) are corrupted

· The system will not boot to the HDD (Hard Disk Drive)

· File sizes change which you didn’t initiate

· Systems crashes

And many more…