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| Recent Newsletter Articles: July 2008 Temecula Chamber of Commerce: Defensive Computing Defensive Computing is the art of defending your computer from the bad guys. Bad guys in computer terms are spyware, viruses, and cookies. Each of these bad guys influences your computer in different ways. Having teenagers in my home, I have to be very diligent about my computer’s defenses. For instance, my teenagers like to surf the web, download programs, games, videos, pictures, and music. Much to my distress, many of the bad guys live here in this “free” internet world. Spyware is computer software that is installed unwittingly on any type of computer through installation of these different programs. Spyware can slow your computer down, redirect your computer to websites the creators of the spyware want you to visit, divert your viewing to advertising revenue for them, change your computer home page, share sensitive and personal information over the web, and inspire lots of pop-up advertisements. Spyware first meant hardware used for espionage and began gaining popularity around the year 2000. According to various surveys by different internet service providers, most computers are infected with some type of spyware. Computers that routinely use Internet Explorer are particularly vulnerable to attacks. Another term that has recently come into its own is Adware. Adware is Spyware that displays advertisements to you after it spies on what you are looking at on the internet. As Spyware threats have become increasingly more common, there has been an influx of “Spyware Removal” programs over the internet. Many of these sites can actually add more spyware to your computer and ultimately hurt you rather than help. Remedies to spyware include legitimate programs to block spyware such as Lavasoft’s Ad-Aware. For severely infected machines, the only remedy may involve backing up the user’s data and fully reinstall the operating system. Other choices include using a web browser such as Mozilla Firefox or Opera. Though no browser is completely guaranteed, it appears that Internet Explorer poses a much greater risk because of having so many users and having programs that are vulnerable to attack. Organizations that have a larger network may build firewalls and web proxies to block access to websites that install spyware. Firewalls can be software or hardware that can be added to your computer network by a CISCO certified network technician. As the world is changing and technology becomes more and more a necessary part of our lives, it is important to keep up on all the changing ways it can affect us. If in doubt, do not download the program. Read licensing agreements carefully and decide if there are programs that you do not want installed on your computer before you check the “yes” or “accept” box. In all cases, routinely run your legitimate Spyware Removal program and Virus Scan your computer on a regular basis. If you want more protection, secure your network by contacting a reputable professional. Although these tricks of the trade will never completely protect us, it will sure slow them down. That’s all for now! Up, Up and Away…….. |