Don’t let careless friends compromise
your security. I’m going to tell seven spreaders of malware and explains how to
stop them.
CULPRIT: The over-sharing Facebook friend
CULPRIT: The over-sharing Facebook friend
What’s the threat?
Social-media malware is becoming
increasingly common on Facebook. It spreads through infected links that people
post on their friends’ walls and in their own status updates. This, in turn,
infects other people’s News Feeds.
How to avoid infection:
Bitdefender's Safego Facebook app
(bit.ly/safego309) protects you from infected links, and will also close any
connections hackers have to your account. It scans items posted on your wall
and in your News Feed to ensure they’re clean, and rates your privacy level
from poor’ to ‘good’.
Similarly, Norton Safe Web
(bit.ly/norton309) scans all the links posted in your News Feed in the last 24
hours and tells you which are safe to click and which may be infected with
malware. You can either scan your feed manually or turn on the app’s Auto-Scan
feature. Both apps can be shared with friends to protect them, too.
CULPRIT: The poor password chooser
What’s the threat?
If someone you know is sending
spam from their email or social-networking account, they’ve probably been
hacked. In most cases, this will be because they’ve chosen a weak password or
used the same one for lots of sites.
How
to avoid infection:
If the infectious person you know
finds it difficult to think of and remember strong passwords, you could recommend
a tool that handles the task for them. The powerful free password manager
LastPass (lastpass.com) encrypts and stores passwords across all browsers, so
they can enter login details with a single click. To create a secure password using LastPass, click the toolbar
icon, go to Tools and choose GenerateStrong Password.
You should also encourage friends
to check their passwords are strong enough by sending them a link to Password
Meter (www.passwordmeter.com). This free
online tool gives each password a percentage score and a complexity rating
based on criteria such as the number of characters, the mix of lower- and uppercase
letters and the inclusion of numbers and symbols.
CULPRIT: The serial email forwarder
What’s
the threat?
Although most forwarded emails contain
nothing more harmful than a terrible joke, others spread malware infected
attachments and web links. This is especially true of chain messages that are
forwarded to big groups of people.
How
to avoid infection:
The best way to combat the risk
posed by mass-forwarded messages is to set up a filter that diverts them from
your inbox. In Gmail, go to Settings, Filters and click Create a new filter. In
the Subject box, type FW OR Fwd (and any other variations) and in the from box,
enter the names of contacts who regularly forward you these kinds of messages.
You can also choose to automatically filter forwarded messages with
attachments.
Click ‘Create filter with this search’,
then select ‘Skip the Inbox’ and/or ‘Delete it’, and click ‘Create filter’.
To create a filter in Outlook.com,
click the Sweep menu, choose ‘Manage rules’ and click New. In Yahoo Mail,
simply select a forwarded email, click the Actions menu and choose Filter
Emails Like This.
CULPRIT: The dodgy downloader
What’s the threat?
If you share your PC with someone
less tech-savvy than you, they might download
malware without you realizing.
Although your security software should prevent infection, there’s still a risk
that something dangerous could slip through.
How
to avoid infection:
If you’re dealing with young
users, consider installing parental-control software such as the Family Safety
program in the free Windows Essentials suite (bit.ly/family309).
If you don’t want to restrict the
person’s access to the web, a browser filter will warn them before they
download dodgy files. We often recommend SiteAdvisor (www.siteadvisor.com), but recently I’ve
found McAfee’s tool a little overzealous, displaying ‘Whoa! Are you sure you
want to go there?’ warnings for perfectly safe sites. A less intrusive alternative
is Bitdefender TrafficLight (bit.ly/traffic309) which displays red alerts when
links contain malware, and green when they’re clean.
CULPRIT: The USB-stick contaminator
What’s the threat?
You borrow someone’s USB memory
stick or retrieve one you’ve lent them, only to find that it contains a virus.
How to avoid infection:
Most USB malware uses a file
called autorun.inf, which runs automatically when the drive is plugged into
your PC. Fortunately, there are a number of free tools that disable it, so it
can’t be read, modified or replaced by malicious code. The best are Panda USB
Vaccine (bit.ly/panda309), which lets you “vaccinate” flash-memory drives as
soon as they’re inserted, to prevent viruses spreading, and Bitdefender USB Immunizer
(bit.ly/immunizer309), which “immunizes” them (basically the same thing).
To make sure malware isn’t lurking
elsewhere on a borrowed drive, always scan it with your anti-virus software
before opening or copying any files.
CULPRIT The unprotected novice
What’s the threat?
Someone who doesn’t have
sufficient security software on their PC and isn’t protected from malware could
be a threat to others as well as themselves.
How to avoid infection:
The best way to prevent your
friend from inadvertently spreading viruses is to clean and secure their system
using a remote-access tool. The excellent free program TeamViewer (www.teamviewer.com) lets you control another
person computer so you can find and fix problems in a jiffy. The file-transfer
feature lets you copy or download anti-virus and firewall software to the
remote PC and scan it for malware. Remove any threats you find and ensure the
security software is set to update automatically to keep the system fully
protected.
Your friend will need to enter
your TeamViewer ID and password to grant remote access to their computer, and
you'll need to enter their ID on your PC you can exchange this information by phone
or email. To copy installation files, simply drag and drop them from your hard
drive onto the other person’s Desktop in the TeamViewer window.
CULPRIT: The identity- theft victim
What’s the threat?
If your friend denies
inadvertently sending you email or social-networking spam, someone else could
be using their account to spread malware.
How to avoid infection:
Your friend can find out if a
stranger has accessed their Facebook account by going to their Security Settings
page (bit.ly/security309) and clicking the Edit button next to Active Sessions.
This will list the location of all devices currently logged into the account.
If any look suspicious, your friend can log them out by clicking End activity’.
To prevent anyone regaining access
to the account, your friend should change the password, and then turn on login
notifications and approvals. This will protect their account with a security
code and alert them if someone tries to log in from an unknown device.
Similarly, your friend can check
if someone has logged into their Gmail account by clicking the Details link
next to ‘Last account activity’ below their inbox. From here, you can sign out
unrecognized sessions and set up alerts for unusual account activity.
For more advice on preventing, detecting
and reporting identity theft, direct your friend to Get Safe Online
(getsafeonline.org).
Thats all. Need help? DROP COMMENTS.
