Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

Welcome to Shields Up!  This weekly column will cover all things related to computer and internet security as well as staying safe as you surf the net.  We’ll cover spams, scams, phishing, malware, and more.

These days the internet has grown far beyond its academic roots and become more than a source of entertainment.  For most people, it is a valuable tool in their daily lives and as much of a necessity as a car or a phone.  Unfortunately, as it’s grown so has cybercrime.  There is a vast underground economy that thrives on stolen information.

Credit card and bank account numbers are bought and sold for big bucks.  Giant botnets, made up of hundreds of thousands to millions of infected computers, are rented out to criminals who use them for everything from simple spamming to DDoS attacks and more.  In countries like India and Pakistan, companies have sprung up offering to crack CAPTCHAs for a fee, and they are booming.  Scammers and spammers pay them a penny for every CAPTCHA they complete, or a few dollars for every couple of hundred.

Phishing attacks cost U.S consumers nearly $500 million over the last two years.  Malware continues to spread and become more and more sophisticated, and spam continues to make up over 95% of all email sent-and it gets worse.  SMS viruses have been spotted, as has a Mac botnet (which may even date back to 2006, according to some reports), and popular social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter are being hit hard by worms and other malicious attacks.

Despite all that bad news, check out this report from Consumer Reports:

Consumer Reports State of the Net survey found that 35 percent of U.S. households didn’t use software to guard against inadvertently downloading “badware,” and 18 percent didn’t use a program to block potentially destructive online viruses. Cost should not be a concern to have an unprotected computer. Through testing, Consumer Reports found that free programs available to protect against viruses, badware, and unwanted spam were on par with the best pay suites tested.

35%!  These days no one should be using a computer without proper anti-virus and anti-spyware software (yes, even if you have a Mac. Apple themselves recommends it!).  In future columns we’ll review the different options available as well as take a look at the fake ones like AntiVirus 2009, which is a form of “scareware.”  I invite you to leave a comment with any questions, comments or topics you’d like to see covered!

Before signing off this week, let’s look at the newest headline being exploited by scammers.  It is of course, the swine flu outbreak.  Spams with subjects related to the virus are hitting inboxes.  Some promise vaccines (none actually exist!), others hype drugs that promise to protect from or cure it, and many more lead to malicious sites that fill your computer with malware.  If you get any emails about the flu outbreak that aren’t from people you know, delete immediately!  Even if they are from people you know, don’t click on any links they may contain. Run the url through Google if you are curious-if it’s malicious the search results will usually reveal it.

That’s all for this week—keep those shields up and stay safe!