Author Archive

Stay Safe When Visiting Social Networking Sites

Sunday, May 1st, 2011

Seeing that you most likely know most malware infections happen when unsuspecting victims open e-mail attachments or use attack internet pages which force feed this malicious software into your PC without you even knowing about it. In a minute we will look at methods you can minimise the likelihood of a virus attack, but first let’s look at some more facts.

Most consumers have taken precautionary steps by installing anti-viral software and only opening e-mail attachments after they have been properly scanned for viruses. These easy measures are sufficient to protect your computer from the majority of impending infections that flood the Net every day, but with the mounting popularity of social networking sites like Twitter, new infections to your computer’s security have emerged.

Social networking sites like Twitter are frequently developed around networks of friends or business connections but as more and more computer users tweet and re-tweet your list of contacts increases exponentially in a short space of time. Many people have their guard down when it comes to re-tweeting and clicking on links in their wall, and this has been capitalised on by malicious hackers who exploit the trust and spread their viral attacks without warning.

So, what can you do about this? Here are a few tips.

1. Regard all links as potentially unsafe. Just since it looks as though your buddy has posted something to your wall does not make it genuine. Make sure the context is proper and that it sounds like something a friend of yours would say. If you are in doubt contact them through another means to check it out. 2. Do not rely on Twitter. Twitter states that it stands all content for malware; this does not mean that they can eliminate every suspicious event. The shortened or URLs used on twitter can be easily redirected to malicious sites and Twitter cannot protect you against this. 3. Keep your browser up-to-date. By using an up-to-date browser you are assured that the necessary security patches have been installed. These patches present you added security on social bookmarking sites. 4. Install anti-spyware protection. Using the best antispyware maximises your protection so you should make sure that updates are installed automatically. Also ensure that you run a thorough spyware scan. Most software producers recommend this course of action and updates will occur at least every day. 5. Keep your software up-to-date. Reader software like Adobe and Adobe flash are commonly used to interpret data from various websites. Malware producers try to prompt users to download updates and in doing so unleash worms and Trojans that can potentially destroy your computer. Never download updates in this way. Always keep your product is up-to-date by downloading directly from the software producers sites. 6. Keep Windows up-to-date. As you most likely know, Windows produces updates on a regular basis and most of these are to update the security of the operating system. Make sure your Windows updates are automatically updated. 7. Do not trust the social network e-mails. By no means assume that an e-mail from Twitter or Facebook or any additional social network site are safe. Hackers use complicated spoofing strategies to mask their true intent and links contained in these e-mails are potentially lethal. Always go to the social network site itself to make sure whether the content of the e-mail is legitimate.

Although all this may seem to be a topic of common sense, if you have ever had to make use of a data recovery service to bring your computer system back up to speed, you will appreciate that prevention is far better than cure.

visit our site to remove the Google Redirect Virus and others like the System Tool Virus