How to safeguard our personal and financial data?

Here have few approaches on how to safeguard our personal and financial data. FIRSTLY, choose your PIN number wisely. DO NOT use your birth date or child's name as your PIN number or password. SECONDLY, be careful when using ATM machine and be aware those seems interested in your transaction. Use your free hand to shield the keypad when entering PIN. THIRDLY, be cautious when providing personal information via internet that you don't know or haven dealt with before even its say important to know to update your information. Besides that, you must ACT QUICKLY if you know your personal information have been used and immediately review your credit reports, place a fraud alert on your accounts, close any accounts opened or used fraudulently or file a report with the police. In order to safe your financial information, you should LOG OUT properly after finish access the website. Access may not be terminated if you simply close or minimize your browser or type in a new web address when you’re done using your online account. In addition, install antispyware and antivirus software. Symantec, Norton, Avg antivirus are popular used by computer users. It cleans computer and protect personal information, financial data and etc. Lastly, it is safer using own computer to access brokerage account than using public computer. Public computer may contain software that capture password to providing that information to others at your expense. If you do use public computer, be sure to DELETE your “Temporary Internet Files” or “Cache” and clear all of your “History” after you log off your account. You should also DOUBLE CHECK to make sure that no one else has attached any device or added programs to your computer without your knowledge or consent.

The threat of online security: How safe is our data?

The Internet has rapidly become an important tool nowadays. Many people use the Internet daily for work or private purposes. Along with the increasing use of Internet, the threat of online security has become more serious.

Many Internet users display more of their personal information on social networking Web sites, and office workers upload more sensitive data to online software programs, it makes computer hackers devise small attacks that can fly under the radar of traditional security software to pry that information loose. As a result, the personal data of the users may be embezzled and the undisclosed financial data or proprietary design and engineering information of organizations may be stolen by hackers because those intellectual properties can be sold for a lot of money.

Even if you connected to the Internet only to play the latest games or to send email to friends and family, your computer may be a target. It is because intruders (hackers, attackers, or crackers) may be able to cause damage to your computer by reformatting your hard drive or changing your data. Intruders are always discovering new vulnerabilities to exploit in computer software. Most of the incident reports of computer break-ins received at the CERT/CC due to system administrators and users did not keep their computers up-to-date with patches and security fixes. Also, some software applications have default settings that allow other users to access your computer. For example, web browsers could allow someone to place harmful programs on your computer that run when you click on them.

In short, users should be careful when access to Internet and do not simply give away any sensitive personal information like password, account number, or other log-in information via e-mail or instant message.

A review on Internet Security : Growing threat from mobile malware

Is the time to worry about mobile malware?
If you are planning to buy the latest mobile phone, first you should ensure that the mobile is protected by anti-virus software, lest the new phone device crashes due to virus or phishing attack. Nowadays, the mobile devices can also be infected with mobile malicious software (malware).

Mobile malware is capable by spreading via Bluetooth, MMS, sending SMS message, infecting files, blocking memory card, etc. The threat of mobile phone malware is expected to become a nightmare for mobile phone users in the not too distant future. Mobile threats have been increasing rapidly in recent years, according to the report, which claims that five times as many security events were reported by mobile operators in 2006 than in 2005. Although the number of attacks remains low, this is mirrored by low levels of risk awareness in the corporate and consumer segments.

In June 2004, TrendLabs noticed that mobile phones were vulnerable to such attacks. SYMBOS_CABIR.A was the first malware noticed and this is said to have spread only via the Bluetooth-enabled devices.

There is potential threat through the mobile malware, which is cyber-crime. It occur in the mobile networks such as the social engineering activities, for example SMS or a call to persuading users to provide their personal and financial information. Further, there are other potential threats for mobiles user, such as spyware sneaked into the phones and monitor voice and text traffic, user's web surfing as well as intercepting passwords and account numbers.

Phishing" Examples and its prevention methods

In computing, phishing is an attempt to criminally and fraudulently acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and credit card details by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication. Paypal, eBay and online banks are common targets.

Following is one of the examples of phishing email scam subject line that attempts to make you panic so you will sign on without thinking:
Need your help! In God we trust!
Sometimes, they often use God in the subject line to try and get people's attention. These emails usually need you to help wire transfer the money. Your reward will be part of the profits, sometimes millions of dollars. Avoid this email all together, these are obviously fake because whatever they can get from you, you will see no money in return.
Example of PHISHING:










For further examples, click the link below:
http://www.consumerfraudreporting.org/phishing_examples.php

However, not all phishing attacks require a fake website , the can also be a phone phishing such as there is a messages that claimed to be from a bank told the users to dial a phone number regarding problems with their bank accounts. Once the phone number ( owned by the phished, and provided by a Voice over IP service)was dialed, prompts told users to enter their acount numbers and PIN. Vishing( voice phishing) sometimes uses fake caller-ID data to give the appearance that calls come from a trusted organization.

There are several different techniques can be used to combat phishing. One of the strategy for it is to train people to recognize phishing attempts and do deal with them. For example, Do NOT click the links in the emails and Do NOT panic because you got an email. If you have any doubts, open your browser and sign on SEPARATELY without clicking any email link and WITHOUT following any instructions in the email. The using of browsers such as Microsoft's IE7 browser, Mozilla Firefox 2.0, and Opera can alerting the users to fraudulent websites or help to identify the legitimate site.

Besides that, certain specialized spam filters which rely on machine learning and natural language processing approaches to classify phishing e-mails can be used to reduce the number of phishing e-mails that reach their addressees' inboxes. Legal responses are another method use to fight the phishing. For example, the federal anti-phishing bill can proposes that criminals who create fake web sites and send bogus e-mails in order to defraud consumers could be fined up to $250,000 and be jailed for up to five years.

As a conclusion, the damage caused by phishing ranges are from denial of access to email to substantial financial loss. Be careful out there!!!!!!!