Cyber attacks are in the news all the time and many tools are available to help you protect yourself.
Here are four kinds of malware to be aware of and how to protect yourself and your children from the Google Family Safety Center page.
Phishing Scams
Email is super efficient, cheap and has immense reach instantaneously. It is also very easy to mimic the look of official companies such as a credit card or bank by grabbing their logo to make the email look authentic. People can be very easily fooled into thinking their bank or credit card company actually needs information from them. Consumers should never answer an unsolicited email. Also, many times you can tell it is not real by looking at the email address. If there is anything in the email address beyond the company name (ex: [email protected] versus [email protected]) that is a red flag the email may not be real.
Viruses
There are three kinds of entities that can attack – viruses, worms and Trojan horses. Most of these are spread through email. The purpose ranges from simply paralyzing the user’s machine to allowing criminal access to files stored on the computer for identity theft purposes.
Adware/Spyware
This type of attack can range from simply downloading advertising you don’t want to tracking your on-line behavior, stealing passwords and compromising your accounts. Usually this happens because of visiting an unsafe website.
Botnets
This is an army of infected computers attacking a website, flooding the site with traffic and crashing the site. It can also steal identities during this attack and puts the users at risk.
Bottom line: be careful of any unknown links in emails and of websites that may be sketchy. Also, make sure you install security software on your machine (I use Avast, which is free and very stable) and keep it updated.