I originally intended to post something in honor of Halloween today, but due to this morning’s event here at home I decided to discuss something truly frightening—Internet hackers! That’s right, we got hacked… Actually, my partner was “hacked,” so far my computer is okay.
A few weeks ago my partner decided to start his own business. Like most people he is starting out with limited funds so he decided to create his website via one of those places that offers free sites complete with hosting, shopping cart, etc. for online stores. He boasted that he could see his visitors’ IP addresses and even the types of computer systems they had. I remember saying something like, “if you can see them, then someone can see you” which, of course, did not translate into “guy speak” and was therefore dismissed.
This morning his Webroot Internet Security software sent him an alert regarding malware; someone had broken through the firewall, changed his security filter to “allow,” and received free access to all his files. What’s really scary is that he can’t reset his own system; he performed a “system restore” to an earlier time but it did not help—the hacker has apparently appointed a sentinel (probably a Trojan virus). My partner’s only option is to wipe his drive and reinstall his entire system. A hassle? Yes! But even worse—what files did the hacker peruse or download if any? Banking information? The password vault? Nightmarish!
Therefore, I thought it might be helpful for all of us to review/share some safety tips:
Know Your Magical WordsYour computer, your router, and just about everything has a password—use them. I heard that most people never change the default passwords in their systems. If you’ve left your password at “Admin”—change it today!
While we’re on the topic of passwords, please don’t use the same password for everything. You can bet that once the hacker learns a magic word it will be the first word he tries at the next locked door.
Proceed with Caution
We all do it—we’re cruising along on the Internet and come across a detour on some website, a game or some other fun temptation--Do Not Enter! If it is really so interesting then open another window and run a search for the company or program. Make sure the site or download is virus free and find out what personal data is collected and how that information is used. Remember, everyone is handing out cookies and they might be more “trick” than “treat.”
Never Stand Alone
Don’t leave your Internet at idle for long periods of time, this allows time for hackers to be mischievous. If you are going to be away from the computer for any length of time shut down your system, disconnect your internet, or run a program such as a virus scan.
Be Able to Defend Yourself
I highly recommend having multiple firewalls and multiple anti spyware/virus software systems—what one system doesn’t catch the next one probably will. On my PC I have
Webroot Internet Security Complete,
ThreatFire, and
Ad-Aware. (Ad-Aware and ThreatFire have free versions available for download.) There are many anti-virus and anti-spyware packages available though so find one that suits your needs and is compatible with your system.
Plan “B”
Always have a current back-up of your entire system just-in-case. I back-up to an exter
My computer system has three firewalls and four spyware programs, so I was surprised when it started having glitches. The trouble began with an update from one of the spyware programs; apparently my XP wasn’t digesting the codes written for Windows. While trying to patch up the paths, my hard drive died.
Usually this would be a sad tale—the repair expenses, the down time, all the lost data. Not this time! I popped in a new hard drive and forty-five minutes later my computer was right back to normal –right down to the emails. How is that possible? I keep regular back-ups on an external hard drive.
If you don’t keep regular back-ups yet, please start. You never know when some little link or download will cause disaster. There are many ways back-up your system but the one I swear by is
Acronis True Image. Acronis creates a mirror copy of my entire system. Yes, all of it! The operating system, the emails, all my programs and pictures...everything is copied and ready to
reinstall with just a few clicks. In fact, Acronis will even format your new drive. How easy is it? Just follow the prompts. If you can answer multiple choice questions you can use Acronis.
How do you keep your data safe? Do you use a different back-up system? Share your favorite back-up ideas here.
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What happened to your partner's website is really scary especially that it is an online store. And those nasty hackers!, I wish we could get rid of them.
I've had my own share of bad experience like yours but is only on my Facebook account. I was not able to properly log out my FB account and when I logged in again, nasty pictures were posted all over my wall. I had to explain to all my friends that I did not post them. I had to delete the pictures manually and change my username and password to fix everything. From then on, I always make sure that I log out from any online account properly.
Thanks for giving us the heads up, Robyn. Happy Halloween :-)
Good post really interesting and usefull.
The danger of having multiple anti-virus packages is that they can interfere with each other.
You also want an alphanumeric password—numbers, letters, symbols, capitals, lower case, whatever you can. The more you have in there, the harder it is to hack, particularly if it's a nonsense password.