January 2009

Online fraud is annoying, costly, and risky for both your accounts and your computer. You can cut a lot of that risk by learning to recognize scams and keeping a few habits consistent. Identity theft predates the web, but going online made it cheaper for criminals to reach large numbers of people. Attackers who want your accounts use phishing, hoaxes, and related tricks to obtain personal information — name, government ID numbers, account names, passwords, and more. ...

Phishing (pronounced “fishing”) is a type of online identity theft. It uses e-mail, text messages, and fraudulent Web sites that are designed to steal your personal data or information such as credit card numbers, passwords, account data, or other information. Con artists might send millions of fraudulent messages with links to fraudulent Web sites that appear to come from Web sites you trust, like your bank or credit card company, and request that you provide personal information. Criminals can use this information for many different types of fraud, such as to steal money from your account, to open new accounts in your name, or to obtain official documents using your identity. ...

Malware sometimes rewrites the hosts file to redirect you to malicious sites or to cut you off from update and security vendors. Locking the hosts file makes unauthorized edits harder. This note was written when Avira Premium Security Suite could lock the hosts file from its firewall settings. Product UIs change; the idea remains: immunize known malware domains first, then prevent silent rewrites. Before you lock Review how the hosts file works. Immunize by blocking known malware domains (for example with a hosts manager such as HostsMan). Then lock the file. Unlock periodically if you want to refresh blocked domains (weekly or monthly). Locking with Avira (historical steps) Assuming you have Avira Premium Security Suite: ...

In computer security, a sandbox is a security mechanism for separating running programs. It is often used to execute untested code, or untrusted programs from unverified third-parties, suppliers and untrusted users. I recommend Sandboxie for daily use on Windows — the open-source fork maintained by the Sandboxie-Plus community after the original project was discontinued. The sandbox typically provides a tightly-controlled set of resources for guest programs to run in, such as scratch space on disk and memory. Network access, the ability to inspect the host system or read from input devices are usually disallowed or heavily restricted. In this sense, sandboxes are a specific example of virtualization. ...

A website reputation tool (often called a site advisor) warns whether a site looks safe, questionable, or risky — commonly shown as green / yellow / red next to search results. These programs usually install as a browser add-on and surface ratings while you use engines such as Google or Yahoo. They typically flag sites associated with phishing or scams, viruses or spyware, spam, browser exploits, and similar abuse. How ratings work Reputation metrics are usually collected from other users who have interacted with the site. Each user indicates whether they were satisfied or not. In the simplest model, reputation is an aggregate of those past ratings. ...

Spam is any kind of unwanted online communication. Common types of spam The most common form is unwanted e-mail. You can also get: Text message spam — sometimes called smishing Instant message spam — sometimes known as spim Social networking spam Harmless vs. dangerous spam Some spam is annoying but harmless. However, some spam is part of an identity theft scam or another kind of fraud. Identity theft spam is often called a phishing scam. ...

If you suspect that you’ve responded to a phishing scam with personal or financial information, take these steps to minimize any damage. Step 1: Report the incident Contact the following authorities: Your credit card company, if you have given your credit card information. The sooner an organization knows your account may have been compromised, the easier it will be for them to help protect you. The company that you believe was forged. Remember to contact the organization directly, not through the e-mail message you received. In the United States, report identity theft at IdentityTheft.gov and file a fraud report at ReportFraud.ftc.gov. You can also report the phishing scam to the Anti-Phishing Working Group by forwarding the phishing e-mail message as an attachment to [email protected]. ...

WiniGuard is rogue antispyware — scareware dressed up as a legitimate security product. It exploits fear of PC infections to push a paid “cleanup.” It does not protect the machine; infected PCs should have it removed, not licensed. This page is a 2009-era field dossier: how it behaved, how it typically arrived, and the filesystem / registry fingerprints shared across the clone family. For the wider genealogy, see The biggest rogue family. ...