The major threats a computer user may expect are – the damage of his stored data or software and stealing of confidential information. A computer can get infected with malicious programs like virus, Trojan, crimeware, spyware, malware or anything else, but the main challenge in front of you is to keep your all the data safe and also to keep your confidential information private while you are online. Before you going online, have you ever thought that your every keystrokes is being tracked by a small code hidden in your laptop or your every online transaction with credit card are being screen shots by a spy software and sending all those confidential data to a cyber criminal sitting back miles away from your town. A malicious code even open a secret door (backdoor) to a rouge person to enter your computer when you go online. As you know that, every disease has its treatment, the same way every malicious code can be identified and tracked before it because any damage to your computer and it can only be done once you have Internet security or at least an updated antivirus solution.
Therefore, a computer user need to be concerned with safety and privacy of all his logical assents-software, database, emails, operations system. In addition, the good news is an average user can be quite efficient in keeping his computing environment safe and sound, if he follow a few guidelines and maintains a few instructions on regular basis. The following are very important steps that you may follow on regular basis and can ensure a great level of computer safety.
- Use Internet security solutions or at least keep good antivirus software
- Always keep updated your antivirus and Internet security software. Though this sounds like a very ordinary task, yet it is one of the most important tasks that many forget to do regularly. It is advisable to keep your antivirus software in auto-update mode.
- Keep your operating system updated. For example if you are Windows user then , right click on “My Computer”, select “properties” and then select “Automatic Updates” tab, click on “Automatic and then click on the “apply button”
- If you receive an email with attachment of word files, excels, any .exe files or even links to another site, then don’t open it unless you are sure that it has been sent from a known person. In case if you have to open, it then uses the scan option before opening it. In case of opening a link you may copy it and paste the URL in your web browser to open it
- Never go online while you are logged on to your computer with your administrative account. Make another account with less privileged to logon your PC for browsing purpose only. With limited privileged malicious cannot do much harm to a computer. To change and damage any data a malicious code always seeks for administrative privilege
- Take backup of your all the important files. As least, you can write the most important files to a CD or DVD. This will make sure that if your computer crash for any reason and you fail to retrieve all the data, then you can get back all the important data from you backup DVDs
How to prevent phishing:In simple words, phishing means taking your confidential information by deceiving. You must have received email asking you to fill up To protect your confidential data from stealing you can follow the following steps:
If you receive an email asking for fill up with your personal information, then do not give then any information. Even if you receive any email from your bank, then call them personally to make sure that they have actually sent that email. Even if you follow the link of the phishing email and see that the website looks like the same of your bank site or any other familiar site, do not take it for granted. Because it is possible to make the exact replica of any site to fool you. If you take a careful look at the URL, then you may figure out the real identify-it will be very similar to you familiar site, but not the exact. For example if you follow a link to buy a watch online and the site looks exactly the same as Amazom.com, then take a look at the URL if it is www.amazon.com then ok, otherwise it is false. The fake URL can be www.amazom.com or anything very similar to that.
- Make sure that your web browser is updated.
- Check your anti-virus log file to see if there are any phishing reports.
- If possible, check your credit card and debit card transaction or any other online transaction statements to make sure that there are no illegal transactions
- If you have to purchase anything only always try to use the secure transaction process. A secure transaction URL will always start with https:// not http://
Finally, always use Internet security software and keep your operating system and web browser updated with the latest security patches.
