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Security Threats You Should Know About
This is my experience & common mistake we'll make atleast once in a while & me & my friend almost paid a good price for our stupidity but got away with it luckily, so, wanted to share this experience so others may avoid these common mistakes.
Social Media Scourges: :)
As we all use social media & with increasing integration on our hand-held devices, services such as geo-tagging & geo-location are on rise.
Geo-Location:
never use geo-location services from your home this is as good as putting posters around the city declaring your address, follow same practice @ your office.
Pattern Recognition:
if you happen to go to the same coffee shop/restaurant/Starbuck on every weekend, it's not difficult to decipher it. Don't update this information each time you visit the place on Twitter or Facebook.
"This was the mistake my roommate made by updating this(our fav coffee shop info on his Twitter page".
Phishing:
one of the common term we all know & heard of or about. Watch out for suspicious page invites on Facebook even from trusted sources such as your friends. (this just the same like Phishing mails we all recieve in our mailbox everyday/hour)
Facebook Engineering:
it's a well known fact that Facebook privacy setting are loose. Don't reveal too much personal information, avoid posting pictures that compromise your security, avoid posting your address & mobile number.
"even today you can find the Facebook database of 10M+ users which was obtained by a Hacker from Facebook Database Server, just try any torrent site & you'll find the file".
Passwords:
many people use simple question like "Your Pet's Name" or something similar as their security question. Thanks to social media, such personal details are very easily available.
Twitter Botnets:
hackers are now using Twitter to spread a specific types of mailicious malware on a PC which follows bots on Twitter. Once these bots are on your system they can be commanded to wipe or steal your data.
Wi-Fi Hotspots:
just because you see an open Wi-Fi network, doesn't mean you need to connect to it. These are rarely secure & other devices connected to them with malware infections can easily infect your PC. So make sure you have an AntiVirus & your Firewall settings are up & running.
"Me & my friend made mistake #2 happily used a free Wi-Fi network for 5 hours & in the morning only found that our D: drive was wiped up & a loss of 2 college projects luckily we had a back-up on our external drive & loss of other 800+ files".
as many of us use banking phone services, using your bank's phone services over a public network is a strict no-no unless you're a poor technology writer with no bank balalnce to begin with.
Fake Software:
if you happen to download a fake AV then you're in for quite some trouble. These rogue viruses not only disable all possible options of recovery but fool you into believing that your PC is infected & you need to pay money in order to get rid of the virus. Applications such as Antivirus Live & Advanced Antivirus Remover are just some of such fake AV s/w.
Recent Findings:
"Social networking sites such as Facebook & Orkut are also being used extensively to carry out virus attacks. Recently, Facebook users were exposed to a slew of worms including Win32/Yimfoca.AA & Win32/Fbphotofake. Yimfoca in Win32/Yimfoca.AA serves as a backdoor that can be contolled remotely & can also spread through other IM software such as Skype, Yahoo Messnger or MSN".
"It is estimated that a whopping 2,60,000 Android users are affected by malware & trojan attacks".
"Lately, there was a similiar case of 1,50,000 Gmail users having all their data wiped out from Google's servers. The reason was a backup software update going awry. The number of people affected was just 0.5% of total Google users globally".
Just be careful what you are sharing & being a little more aware you can avoid most of the above mistakes.
Happy Computing...
Note:
Source of this post & related document is from Digit – Thinkdigit Technology Guides | Technology News Reviews |Free Downloads | Video | Tech Support Forums Online in India
Similar article is also available on Security threats you should know about - Business of Life - livemint.com
Last edited by Sunimar; 15 Apr 2011 at 10:47.
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