Phishing...

Given the people didn't seem to know what it was the other day: try this BBC article, especially given the spate of hotmail and gmail phishing problems.

97% of e-mail...

...is spam according to a Microsoft security report.

Apart from getting in the way and being generally annoying, there's an increasing rate of attachments along with all the joyous security concerns.

Out of every 1000 machines the report suggests that 8.6 are infected with a virus or malware of some kind. Interesting geographical distribution whilst we're at it:

Used in Spam overwhelms e-mail messages on the BBC website. Image originally produced by the lovely, lovely people at Microsoft...

I'd say that suggests to be careful of anything coming out of Russia and Brazil.

All the more reason to do the things which should be standard: decent anti-virus; update regularly; employ service packs; check for malware and spyware. Oh, and just don't open attachments or download stuff from sites without checking them first.

(The report) found that Office document attachments and PDF files were increasingly being targeted by hackers.

From: Spam overwhelms e-mail messages, BBC website

As I've said before, the number of people who simply don't seem to be aware they have to do this stuff always baffles me. But, you know, keep on downloading and adding friends on msm. Nothing bad can come of that...

Scammers and Young Tweeting

Hmm, so it seems that it's news that scammers take advantage of dodgy internet links to persuade people to click links and download oh so helpful anti-virus software.

I did kinda think that the days of people actually clicking on those buttons that appear as ads on web sites were over perhaps? Maybe not...

Anyone clicking on a booby-trapped page is then instantly re-directed to the site hosting the links to the fake security software.

Once they arrive, visitors are bombarded with pop-ups warning that their PC is infected. To clear up the infection, users are told, they must download and pay for anti-virus software which typically costs about $50 (£34).

'Scareware' scams trick searchers, BBC website 23/03/2009

I guess it's maybe the use of search engines that makes this a newer thing - up by over 200% in 2008 apparently.

Maybe teaching primary school kids how to use blogs and twitter will improve things? You'd hope so anyway.

Cyber crime report

Interesting report from the BBC Click! programme team about cyber crime.

Lots of good stuff on what happens and how to stop it happening. Well worth a read.

Free antivirus

Someone, let's call her "Hayley", asked about free antivirus software.

Well, as you might have read there are a whole bunch of "dodgy" free antivirus software around. So, as always, be careful what you're downloading!

What is certain, though, is that you need antivirus software and you need to keep it up to date. But you also need to take a lot of care where you go on the internet and what you do there.

A couple of half decent free resources, then would be:

AVG Free or Avast.

I've used both and they're both OK. If you really get a real problem then Sophos has a free 30 day trial. It's expensive to sign up for the full version, but if you need to get out of a problem then Sophos might be the cure if nothing else is working.

Of course, you'll also need to make sure to check for spyware, malware and all the other nasties.