Published at 11 December 2008
in Internet.
Having recently doled out some advice on staying safe online I guess it was kind of inevitable that a “security situation” would come my way – one of our computers was infected a few days ago. But in case you’re wondering, the False Prophet I’m referring to is not me!
No, it’s a particularly insidious piece of malware which purports to be looking out for your best interests, in order to con you into installing it. I’m referring to a trojan called “Antivirus 2009″ (also known as AV 2009) which appears to propagate by infecting legitimate websites. Here’s what Google Safe Browsing has to say about it.
Continue reading ‘Beware the False Prophet!’
Published at 30 November 2008
in Internet.
A couple of days ago I had the privilege of speaking to a group of writing students about the joys of blogging. Whilst many of them had never previously come across the concept of blogging and were intrigued by it, it didn’t take long for the question of online safety to come up. I must confess I was initially somewhat taken aback by their concerns, as I personally don’t worry much about getting virused, hacked, or falling victim to an online scam.
But as I pondered the question I realised that the reason I’m pretty relaxed about this stuff now is that over the years I’ve learned how to avoid most of the common pitfalls and recognise and deal with potentially threatening situations when they arise. Here are my top tips for staying safe online:
Continue reading ‘How to stay safe online’
