Router pharming: your bank account is an open book

by Alex Zaharov-Reutt

Wednesday, 21 February 2007

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But there’s still you. You have to make sure that you are secure on the Internet, even if you need other people’s help to make it happen. You need to use strong passwords and WPA2 encryption on your wireless router and to change your router’s password. You need to make sure that you use different and strong passwords for the sites you regularly visit, instead of using the same username and password at every site.

You need to make sure that you regularly backup your data, even if these days it’s as easy as using software that can automatically make a backup to an external USB hard drive and even uploading your data to a secure location on the Internet protecting you if something happens to both the computer and the USB drive because they were together.

And you need to keep on learning about the life in the digital and real worlds, and making sure you’re ready to handle the challenges.

If you’re ready to start, an excellent article from David Shamah of The Jerusalem Post gives a good almost step by step guide on what to do about the latest threat of drive-by pharming. If you haven’t already read up on the details elsewhere and would like to empower yourself to better security, read it.

But if you’re not really sure about Internet security, and don’t really know what to do, as just buying the latest 2007 Internet security packages still isn’t enough, please get help, whether from a genuinely knowledgeable friend, your local computer store or ‘come-to-you’ computer help services like Geek Squad in the US and Gizmo in Australia.

Otherwise there’s a chance that some of the spam you receive every day could be being sent in part by the botnet your own computer could be connected to if infected by malware/spyware/viruses/Trojan horses or something else.

And if you aren’t part of the solution, you’re part of the problem. Computer owners of the world – you each individually have the power to make sure your computer isn’t unwittingly part of the dark side.

Please – use that power with the great responsibility that Spiderman would counsel and collectively we can fight back against the online criminals that are trying to take control!
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