Protecting yourself against digital threats
You are working on your PC. Outlook Express is running and it has been set to automatically retrieve your e-mail every three minutes. Then, several e-mails land in your inbox from Sweden that look as unfamiliar to you as Enron's accounting policies. Their messages contain things like "Attached, please find the proposal you requested." What is the first commandment? Thou shalt not click on that attachment!
As John Dvorak, PCMagazine's popular and controversial columnist said recently, viruses, worms, Trojan horses and now spam will always be with us. While it is difficult to imagine why someone would create software that gives other users a headache -- we all know we are not living in a perfect world. The problem is, so many of us computer users still commit the forbidden clicking, (intentionally or not).
The so-named "Sobig" worm managed to slow down the Internet earlier this month, forcing ISPs to crawl under the extremely heavy traffic of harmful garbage. People who rely on the Internet for their work became victims. McAfee classifies this worm as high risk.
What does the Sobig do? Once it succeeds in infecting your system, it will find the e-mail addresses that exist on your hard drive and send out messages. It can even alter the name of the bogus e-mail's sender. After a while, you will receive notification from strangers, who say that your e-mail has been rejected or quarantined because it contains dangerous materials. You know you didn't send an e-mail to that address. But those e- mails are bouncing around like crazy.
How do you protect yourself, and you computer, from the threat of viruses, worms, Trojan horses, spam, cookies, etc.? As you probably know by now, the first and most basic step is to subscribe to a reputable anti-virus provider, and keep your anti- virus program and data updated all the time. There is no other way, particularly if you are connected to the Net quite a lot. Second, turn on your firewall, (if you use Windows XP). If you are using an older version of Windows, buy a shareware version.
The two companies, Symantec and McAfee, are still the leaders in digital protection, although, if you look around, you may find bargain-basement shareware that also does a good job. The two companies are recommended because they provide more complete and integrated protection. McAfee (www.mcafee.com), for example, offers PCSecuritySuite, a comprehensive protection that includes anti-virus, personal firewall and privacy guard. Its arch rival, Symantec (www.symantec.com), has Norton Internet Security 2004, a protection product that also includes protection against spyware and keylogger. Unfortunately, they are not cheap. Spyware and keylogger are two newer digital threats that we Internet users have to deal with. Spyware is software that attempts to steal information from your system, while a keylogger keeps a record of every keystroke made. If you access your Internet bank account using someone else's computer, for example, he may immediately find out your login name and PIN.
Regardless of the products that you buy and install on your system, there are two important things to avoid. First, if you receive e-mails with dubious attachments, do not click on them. E-mail the sender and ask whether they were really sending something to you.
Second, to avoid spams, do not reply to them. If you read "Click here if you want to be removed from the list of recipients," -- just ignore it. If you replied, the spammer would know that you were real, and he would send you even more spams.
Protecting yourselves from these threats is getting more and more challenging. So, it is perhaps a good idea to follow the news about virus breakouts. Granted, it is another chore to add to your already hectic life, but what else can you do? While the Internet opens up many new avenues, it also exposes us to increasingly serious threats, with serious implications.