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Home::Malware
A free lunch?
Author : David Fairhurst
Throughout the last few years the threat of viruses and spam
mail on computers has been more widely publicised. Even if you
rarely use computers you would be surprised the effect it could
have on your home or business. The cost of protecting you and
your business due to the sheer 'fear factor' imposed on us by
the media seems quite high. However this is not the case. It's
the cost of not protecting yourself which could be the greatest
of all!
With technology advancing so rapidly in order to combat the
threat of hackers, viruses and spyware, often it seems quite
daunting to deal with all the problems we can face in our homes
and businesses. Often we simply have no idea what to look out
for and even with our attempts at 'fire-walling' and 'virus
scans', unethical hackers are still getting through and
corrupting files on PC's worldwide, and this affects even huge
multi-national corporation, not just the home user. An
unprotected machine can be infected within a matter of minutes -
computer experts have tested this theory by setting up a
computer with no protection and putting it on-line. Within
twenty minutes various hackers and bugs were probing the system
looking for weak spots to get into the system.
Recently it has been suggested that by 2007 the internet will
crash as it will not be able to cope with the sheer volume of
irritating spam and viruses people are putting on it. This seems
unlikely at first but when reports suggest that 70% of the
Internet is currently taken up by spam we begin to understand
why. The time to take a stand against the spread of viruses,
spam and spyware is now, and it is down to every user worldwide
to do their bit to help.
With businesses giving us incentives to use their services
on-line (as ultimately it costs them less and it is more
convenient for us!) the threat of intrusion into our computers
is becoming ever more serious. Banks, insurers, and even small
local businesses are taking their products and services online
and taking advantage of e-commerce in order to reach a wider
market. Customer confidence in this new marketplace is not going
to grow unless the average user feels safe online.
There are a lot of free tools out there on the 'web' that
promise to clean your machine of spyware, malware and viruses.
Some of them are good, some of them bad and others are downright
ugly!
Unfortunately some unethical hackers have got in on the act of
providing free software (don't confuse these people with ethical
hackers who provide their services for free by writing software
that anyone can use and is genuinely useful to everyone!). Be
aware that the 'free spyware removal tool' you have just
downloaded and installed may be just a mask for a backdoor to
your machine!
How do you tell the difference between good 'free' software and
bad then? Well...it isn't easy most of the time, but if you look
for software developed by the 'free and open source foundation'
you won't go far wrong, as all of this software is 'open source'
and so the code written to make the software is viewable by
anyone - this means that unethical hackers can't hide any nasty
surprises in the software.
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