Almost anyone who accesses the Internet regularly is likely to have a social networking page like Facebook or Twitter of some kind. However, the popularity of these sites can attract cyber criminals who have the potential to steal your personal information, identity, and possibly much more.

Phishing is one type of security threat a user may face on social networks. An attacker will steal login credentials through a variety of methods. One way for an attacker to phish login credentials is setting up a phony website identical to the login page of the targeted social network site. You will enter your username and password on the fake site, not noticing it’s phony, and instantly an attacker has your login information. Login credentials can also be intercepted when you access sites on a public Wi-Fi network at a restaurant, airport, etc.

Once your login information has been compromised, it can be abused many ways. An attacker can get more personal information about you from your profile, and sell it to other cyber criminals.  They can also send links or messages out to all your friends that appear to be trustworthy because they are sent from your account. However, by clicking these links, your friend can unknowingly install a malicious program, or to login to a phishing site themselves.

Another danger can arise when you use location-based services on Facebook and similar social sites. Over-sharing information on your whereabouts or frequently “checking-in” at places lets your friends know where you are, but this could also be dangerous if that information gets in the wrong hands. Pinpointing your location also lets potential criminals where you are NOT at (home or office) and if they know or can access your address, this can leave you vulnerable to a possible burglary or related attack.

Although there are many positive benefits to social networking sites, there are almost as many possibilities for cybercriminal attacks.  To protect yourself and prevent these attacks, be sure to take the following precautions:

• Always access the Internet on a secure network.
• Avoid logging into your email and social networking accounts while on public Wi-Fi hotspots.
• Make sure any site you are logging into has a valid SSL certificate and the domain name is not corrupted.
• Look for sites with https rather than just http in the URL. In Facebook and Twitter, you can now check your account settings to set SSL/HTTPS encryption by default.
• Don’t open any email or messages, or click on any links that seem suspicious, even if they’re from a friend.
• Set your social networking accounts to as private as possible, avoid frequently posting your location, and ask friends to not tag you at a location on these sites.
• Always log-out of your accounts, especially when on a public computer or network

It’s safe to assume most everybody reading this right now has, or has had a desktop PC at some point. After all, they are what most people think of when “computer” is mentioned. But has the advancement of new technology like the laptop, iPhone, iPad, Google’s Android OS, and so on made the desktop PC irrelevant?

The answer is simply NO.

People’s reliance on the old and familiar will trump any kind of new advancement a company like Apple may make in the portable area. There are and always will be people who refuse to, or simply can’t wrap their mind around a touch screen or a smaller, more compact screen. For example, hardcore gamers will never abandon their trusty desktop they’ve had and been upgrading since the days of Quake and Unreal for that optimal gaming experience.

The desktop is familiar, effective, and nowadays, inexpensive. Not to mention you can’t beat its muscle power. As advanced as Apple’s A4 processor may be or become, there’s no beating a custom built Intel i7 Sandy Bridge with the graphics chip to back it up.

Yes, we have microchips, we have microprocessors, and they can certainly get the job done. But the desktop is, was and always will be the powerhouse computer everyone knows and loves. Perhaps there is a future where everything will be wireless, integrated, and portable- we’re almost there now. So long as there are computers, the desktop will always serve as the standard in personal computing.

Here at My Wire Guy, we commonly have computers come in that are heavily infected with viruses. However, the odd thing about this is, the majority have major name Anti-Virus products running on them at the same time as the infections. So, why exactly aren’t these programs catching these?

Now, lets ask, what exactly is an Anti-Virus product? Well, its a program designed simply to look for what it already knows. What this means is, the program can only attack what its programmed to attack, and therefore any new infection that the makers have not come across, it will consider a normal program (Unless it is very similar to another infection, in which case it would find it)

This works well if someone else’s computer has already been infected, diagnosed, and added to the list of known infections. However, if a person writes a new one that is unlike any other infection (Such as the TDL infections when they first broke out), the majority of Anti-Virus programs will be powerless against it until the makers analyze it, and add it to the database. This is the reason why we see a machine being brought in that’s infected, yet has an Anti-Virus program on it.

For us, this means that we must make sure we are not in the first wave of a new infection. By enabling features such as the NX-bit on CPUs (Also known as Data Execution Prevention) on Windows, GNU/Linux and UNIX-Like Operating Systems (Mac OS X’s DEP is enabled by default), as well being careful on non-major websites and other general safety procedures, we can help to mitigate these initial waves. So even if you do get an infection, the program will already know what it is and kill it before it even runs.

WoW!!  Just got back from a house call to fix an Email problem, I could not believe the amount of junk in the inbox.  Only about half of the messages were wanted, and the other half?  -What a mess.  There were ad’s from businesses, come-on’s for pharmaceuticals or quasi pharms.  They had requests from banks, e-bay and other online accounts that they did not even belong to.  My customer was asking me, “How could I have a Facebook account when I’ve never even visited the site before”.  That is a perfect example of “phishing”.  I did my best to clean-up the junk, and then passed on some tips on keeping the spam away from the inbox.  These tips and more I will pass on to you.

Maintain two Email accounts.

Yeah, I agree this can be a pain, but the pay-off is a drastic reduction in junk.  I recommend that you keep one account that you give to your friends, bank and most trusted web sites, and then have a second account that you use when you need to sign up for internet shopping sites, newsletters, and software downloads.  This will insure that your most important mail gets your attention and all the come-on’s end up in the other account.

Places you can create a secondary e-mail account;

Your ISP Wave Broadband, Surewest, Comcast, etc.

www.Hotmail.com

www.Gmail.com

www.yahoo.com

www.inbox.com

Un-Check those boxes!!

This is your opportunity to reduce the number of ads from sites you register for, or from companies whose programs you download.  During installs or when you register watch for the boxes asking for newsletters and ad subscriptions.  They are normally pre-checked, so un-check them.

Use a temporary account.

A temporary account is perfect for when you need an email account to register for services on a web site.  10minutemail.com or www.Guerillamail.com are just the answer.  You can quickly create a disposable account that is only good for the length of time you need it.  These will guarantee that your main account stays spam-free.

“Unsubscribe” is no help!!!

Taking the time to unsubscribe from junk mail is a sure fire way to let marketers know that your email account is active.  Just delete this mail, it’s easy, fast and it won’t be encouraging them.

Install some Anti SPAM software.

Ok, this can be a bit tricky, but if you use a mail client like Outlook, Live Mail or Thunderbird these programs may be just the answer if your ISP believes the Anti Spam fight is up to you.  A free utility like SpamFighter @ www.spamfighter.com will dramatically cut down on the amount of spam that comes to your inbox.  There are many other security suites that you can pay for that do a good job as well.

By My Wire Guy Tech – Rich Burger

It’s 1998 and you just bought yourself a nice new hard drive for your computer. With a whopping 12 gigabytes of memory, you are ready to store and enjoy hundreds of photos, songs, and emails, all on the same computer!
It’s 2011 and there is no doubt that computers have advanced extremely rapidly since 1998, but what has perhaps seen the biggest overhaul are hard drives (HDD’s). That top of the line 12gb drive you bought in ’98 is equivalent to the average flash drive nowadays. You can buy hard drives of capacities upwards of 1000 gigabytes now, but they felt like there was still something missing. Sure the storage space is nice, however the read speeds (the speed at which you can actually put things on the drive and retrieve them) just aren’t up to snuff when compared to the massive sizes of today’s drives.
Enter Solid State Drives. Commonly abbreviated SSD’s, these drives simply rip through info, making everything accessible virtually instantly. These drives no longer have to search a big disk for the data you want to access like the standard HDD’s. It’s just there. SSD’s use a special kind of flash memory, meaning your data is written directly to a chip instead of a big circular disk. This also means that SSD’s will take up considerably less space inside your machine, because the chips they store data to are more compact than the standard HDD’s. The speed itself is a marvel. An SSD can write at up to 550 megabytes per second. At speeds like that, a movie for your iPod will copy to your computer in one second. The fastest that top of the line HDD’s will go to is 100Mb/s. Long story short, SSD’s will go five times faster than your hard drive, and there is no chance of data corruption. Everything is simply there.
Sounds too good to be true, right? Well, no one ever said good things come at low prices. Let’s take the price of $100. At that price, you can get a top of the line 1 terabyte hard drive, that is, 1000 gigabytes. For the same price, you’d only be getting 64 gigabytes of solid state memory. So yes, these things are expensive. However, the benefits far outweigh the cost. If you simply NEED storage space, get yourself a terabyte external drive to store things on it. As for your personal computer, we recommend you really look into solid state drives. The performance and speed of these things are untouchable. If you consider yourself an enthusiast at any level, SSD’s are essential.