Jan 5

Written by: mark.williams
1/5/2010 10:20 AM

 

1. Opening Fake, Unsolicited E-Mail: MSN, PayPal, UPS, Fed-Ex, IRS, Your Bank…none of these companies are going to send you an email with an attachment, or ask you to click a link to change your account information it’s been compromised. If you receive an email from UPS with a link to track a package, just copy the tracking number, open your web browser and go to ups.com. There is a spot to enter your tracking number right on the left hand side. Go there directly. Don’t click on links in emails. You don’t know where they’ve been!

2. Social Networking Sites: Facebook, MySpace and Twitter are real popular and that is why that makes them the perfect spot to get a virus. Updating your status is OK, but don’t follow links posted by friends. If your friend’s account was compromised, the hacker can post a link that looks like it is from your friend that will take you to a web site where you will be compromised as well. Stay away from the Quizzes, Polls, Games, etc on these sites. Many of them are viruses. Even the safe ones make you give 3^rd party companies access to your entire Facebook profile, your friends, contacts, pictures, posts…

3. Not keeping up to date: Windows Updates are the easiest way to keep your computer safe – Go into Control Panel and make sure that it is set to automatically download and install the updates every night. The same goes for your Anti-Virus software – Make sure it is checking for updates at least once a day. Many A-V companies update their definitions several times a day.

4. Not using strong Passwords and changing them regularly: Make them 9 characters or longer and make sure they are NOT words you can find in the Dictionary. Don’t use the same 2 passwords for everything either. Use different passwords for different sites. Use a program like ROBOFORM to store all your passwords for you. Then all you have to remember is the password for Roboform.

5. Not backing up your hard drive: Backup your computer already! You are going to get a virus and your hard drive will die. It’s not a question of IF it will happen. It’s a matter of WHEN it will happen. Your kids pictures, your resume, homework assignments, work documents, all your email, your calendar…all these things are stored on your computer…and that is the ONLY place they are stored. What happens if you boot up your computer tomorrow and it doesn’t start because the hard drive is broken? If it won’t spin, even I can’t get your data back. For $50 a year you can backup an unlimited amount of data on Carbonite.com. There is a free program called SyncBack that will let you backup your files to an external USB Drive, and if you have Windows 7, it comes with a free backup program and a free System Imaging program that is super simple to use. So back it up!
   
   I can't even count how many times people have come to me in a panic because their computer wont start or is overtaken by viruses. When I ask them where their backup is, they look at me like I have two heads. they say "I don't have a backup, but I NEED YOU to get my data back!!" My question to you is...If your data and pictures are THAT IMPORTANT, why don't you have them backed up somewhere?
   
   There is a saying in the computer industry that if you only have one copy of your data, you don't have any copies of your data. Anything worth saving on your computer needs to be saved in at least 2 different locations. Making a copy of your My Pictures folder and storing it on the same computer is useless. If your hard drive crashes, both copies are gone.
   
   Many households now have more than one computer in the house. If you have a PC in the den and a laptop or a second computer for the kids to use, use a free program like SyncBack and copy your important folders from one computer to the other. The chances of both computers going down at the same time are pretty small, so that is a good option. Just set up SyncBack to keep those files in sync once a day and you now you have two copies in two different physical locations.
   
   An even better option is to use an online service like Carbonite.com, as mentioned above. You set up Carbonite when you install it, tell it what folders you want it to back up, and that is all there is to it. After that, Carbonite constantly monitors those folders and whenever there is a change, it uploads those changes to Carbonite's servers. What is nice about that is that if you have a theft, flood or fire, after you get a new computer, you log into Carbonite.com, download all those folders to your new PC, and you are back in business. $50 a year is pretty cheap insurance for that kind of peace of mind.

6. Unsecured Wireless Routers: If you have a WIFI router at home, make sure you are using WPA2 encryption and that it is using a strong password (See #4). If your neighbor can guess your password, they can get on your network.

7. Fake Virus Warnings – Fake virus warnings have gotten really good over the last 2 years. They look just like Norton or Windows security alerts. If you see one of these massages pop up on your screen…it’s probably already too late. If it is infected, there’s no way to be 100% sure that your system is clean again without reinstalling Windows from scratch. This is why having a current backup is so important.

8. Keep the junk off your PC: Toolbars, Search Bars, Weather Bug, free smiley faces, free screensavers, Limewire, E-Donkey, Bit Torrent…Keep programs like these off your computer. Most of them are spy ware programs that slow down your system, and some of them will give you a virus that, again, will make you reinstall Windows from scratch and lose all your data if it isn’t backed up.

9. Kids: If your kids use your computer, create a separate user account called KIDS, and make sure it is a limited account. They will not be able to install any software from that account, so you will have to install it from your account. This way you control what gets installed on the computer. The vast majority of infected computers I work on that have viruses are home computers that the kids use. They download file-sharing applications like Limewire, take all the quizzes on Facebook, download infected illegal music and movies...If you have control over what gets installed on your computer, your risk of virus infection goes down dramatically.

10. Did I mention BACKUP?????

Copyright ©2010 Mark Williams

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