Phishing and identity theft is big business
Phishing is sending out an e-mail that appears to come from a reputable business and asking for information. This information can then be used to access your bank or credit information Identity theft is someone who manages to find your id’s and passwords so they can pretend to be you. It may be that they will attempt to pretend to be you by sending e-mails out in your name. It may be that they will access your bank details and steal money from you or arrange for loans in your name.
There are many different program names that can be installed on your system by unscrupulous people. They all come under the general name of keyloggers as they will create a log of the keystrokes you make including web site names and access passwords. As it is in the form of separate keystrokes then it needs to be put together by a program to get unscrambled information that can be analyzed. This can then be used to target advertising to you and your preferences when you access the web site.
Intrusion detection systems are becoming more and more important. You do not know what someone else or an intrusive program is going to do so to stop it when it begins to intrude into your computer. Stop the intrusion before you lose your information.
Open source and commercial intrusion detection systems. It sounds very posh but it is all very simple. In order for your computer to be infected by adware, spyware or malware there must be some sort of intrusion of some software from outside your computer into your computer’s system. So in order to detect and prevent problems with adware, spyware or malware the prevention of their intrusions is the best place to start. The software then is called an intrusion detection system. There are commercial versions of these systems from people like Symantec, Kaspersky and McAfee and also there are Open source versions of this software. Open Source can be acquired for free but the whole idea of Open Source is to contribute to the continuing development of the product either by giving some money when you get it, or by contributing to the user group or by writing some new parts of the software when needed. I am not making any recommendations of the best Commercial or Open source software to purchase as the situation could change in the next few days and either a new company comes into the market that is the best or one of the established companies gets it wrong and a large number of people become infected. Beware of any company boasting about their ability to completely eradicate adware, spyware and malware as there are always new problems coming to light. Beware of taking any free software at face value as there are some unscrupulous people who say they are giving away an intrusion detection system and all they are giving you are copies of spyware and malware programs to infect your system. So read computer magazines and reviews on the web, and ask not only your friends but also your business contacts to see what they are using. If you are working for a company, what do they use, and can the same software be installed on your home computer at no extra cost in order to prevent cross infection when you take work home. It is always worth asking and even if they say no there may be someone in your IT department who can recommend an Open Source, free or low-cost software.
In order to minimize the intrusions into your computer it may be necessary to surf anonymously. This is even more important when your company or country blocks certain web sites that you want or need to have access to. A company may block access to MySpace and other gaming sites so that employees work when they are supposed to, but that may not be very helpful when someone is working out of hours and is waiting for results of tests, so a proxy server may be the answer. Also within some countries there may be attempts by the government to block access to certain sites. The countries with the most extensive list of blocked sites are Iran and China.
