Who you are matters. Thing is, you know who you are but, to the Internet, you’re a collection of data. This includes your name, date of birth, address, mother’s maiden name, names of your pet, siblings and so on.
If someone wants to steal or imitate your identity, all they have to do is collect enough of those pieces of information to fool a computer system into thinking that they are you. You’re not significant enough? It doesn’t matter: crooks will be happy to get small amounts of money every month from your credit card — yours and those of hundreds of thousands of other people — amounts small enough for you not to notice or want to go to the trouble of reporting.
You’ll probably have seen some of the warnings from your bank telling you to look out for bogus emails asking for your password and so on. That’s one way for crooks to steal pieces of your identity. That way, and by installing Trojans via infected websites that log your keystrokes and beam them home.
Of course, you should never pass details such as that over the Internet unless at the very least you are certain you trust the source of the request, and the link is encrypted. (You do encrypt your outgoing emails, don’t you? If not, go to your email program now and change the SMTP settings that to prevent anyone else reading the emails you send.)
And we’re now hearing of bogus phone calls to individuals warning that their PC is infected, and suggesting how to put it right. It’s in our nature as human beings to trust others but you have to assume that, unless you know the individual calling you, calls such as this are designed to extract personal information from you that can at some point be used to your disadvantage. Moral of the story: never give your passwords to anyone.
If it so happens that your PC does become infected, don’t panic — find a reputable anti-virus application and use it according to the instructions. And don’t assume that free means worse: in the world of software, it’s not better just because it carries a price tag.
Are you a nerd?
Don’t go to nerdtests.com. Avast’s user community has discovered malware (a hijacked google analytics script)on that site — and from the screenshot of the page on Avast’s blog, it looks like Avast was the only AV package to pick it up.
If you’re an Avast user, be pleased with yourself — and keep your eyes open and your software up to date.
