Malware Risks Increased 500% From January This Year!

The risks of malware have increased 500% from January this year. According to an article at Yahoo Tech:

A new report from security services provider ScanSafe finds that companies are at increasing risk of having employees inadvertently download backdoors and password stealers onto corporate computers from Web sites that have malicious software hidden on them.

A company in ScanSafe's focus group faced a nearly 500 percent greater risk of exposure to those threats in September than was faced in January of this year, according to ScanSafe's Global Threat Report released on Tuesday.

http://tech.yahoo.com/news/cnet/20081022/tc_cnet/8301100931007228583

As you can see, the increase is nearly 500% than January this year! That is less than a year! Here's another quote from the same article:

MessageLabs intercepted 7,000 phishing attacks exploiting Bank of America on October 16 and 15,000 on October 17, reaching 125,000 total e-mails over that weekend. American Express was the focus of a phishing attack that started on October 20 and reached 35,000 e-mails for the day.

Now let me ask you these simple questions:

1. Do you have a firewall?
2. Did you installed any anti-spyware software into your PC?
3. Do you know how to protect yourself from phishing?
4. Did you installed any anti-virus into your PC?
5. How's your internet connection speed? Is it slower than before?
6. Do you know which websites are harmful and which are not?

If you can answer these questions, then it's good for you. However, for those who don't know the answer to these questions, you need to learn more and more. I suggest you to read this blog through and if you have any question, feel free to drop a comment or two.

Good luck

Avast! Free Antivirus Software Review

I've been using Avast! Antivirus Free Edition for quite some time and so far, I'm satisfied with it. Previously I used AVG. But there was one time when my computer was infected with a virus and AVG cannot detect it, but Avast! Antivirus Free Edition can detect and remove it.

Even though you can update the AVG virus database almost everyday, but still, it cannot detect the virus that was infecting my computer. However, Avast! Antivirus Free Edition lack the scheduled scan feature which AVG has. You have to do manual scanning to scan your computer and for some people, they don't like it.


Before using Avast! Antivirus, you have to register your copy at Avast! website and they will email you a serial key that you need to key in before using the Avast! Antivirus.

Other than that, Avast! Antivirus has six types of shield such as web shield, p2p shield, network shield and much more. You can check it out once you installed it.

So, if you want to know which one is best for you, I suggest you to try both first. But please remember that you cannot have two antiviruses installed at the same time in your PC.

By the way, if you guys planning to buy the Avast! Antivirus Professional Edition version 4.8, feel free to click the picture below.

How To Protect My PC Against Phishing?

What is phishing? Do you know what phishing is? According to Wikipedia:

In the field of computer security, phishing is the criminally fraudulent process of attempting to acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and credit card details, by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication.

So, from the description, you know what phishing is and if the criminals get your credit cards, banking username and password, then you're in big trouble.

How to protect your PC and you from phishing?

1. You can use McAfee Site Advisor to advise you which websites are dangerous and which are not. Download McAfee Site Advisor from McAfee website.

2. Use Yahoo Search because Yahoo just introduce the SearchScan powered by McAfee to identify which websites are harmful.

3. Scan your computer regularly for spyware and adware using Spybot Search and Destroy and Ad-Aware.

4. Install a firewall and only allow the processes that you know to send information out from your computer.

5. Check if the website is secure or not before entering any sensitive information. Secure websites contain 'https://' at the website's URL.

6. Never enter your sensistive information to suspicious websites.

These are some tips that you can use to protect yourself from phishing. It's not much but at least you can protect yourself and please remember to apply these tips.

How Vulnerable We Are To Online Threats

"Just having anti-virus software is not enough," Rak said. "Picture a car with antilock brakes, airbags, and seat belts--I doubt any of us would buy a car without seat belts installed."

Just over 80 percent of respondents had antispyware protections enabled, and 95 percent had updated antivirus software. Yet just 50 percent had antiphishing protections.

Even though 81 percent of respondents said they had firewall protections on their computers, only 42 percent of those computers checked were actually equipped with them. As many as 75 percent of respondents thought they had antispam filters installed when, in fact, only 58 percent actually did.

From an article on Yahoo Tech News (http://tech.yahoo.com/news/cnet/20081002/tc_cnet/8301100931005686483)

From the article, actually many of us "believe" that we are safe from online threats but in fact, we are not.

Why we "believe" we have enough protection? I don't know about you guys, but I think it's because we lack the knowledge that we need to protect ourselves. We thought that having only antivirus or antispyware is enough. That's why we just don't care about it.

However, we don't know that we also need other protection than antivirus to protect. That's why this blog exist, to provide you with the knowledge that you need to protect yourself from online threats. If you have any question regarding PC protection, just leave a message or comments on this blog.

I'll try to get back to you A.S.A.P and will try to answer your question.

So, what's the solution to this problem? I think the correct answer should be "knowledge". If you know how to protect yourself from online threats, you don't need to use expensive software. But, if you don't have the knowledge, even though you're using the most expensive and the most advance protection software in this world, it's just the same with not using any software at all.

P.S- Share with me your opinion

Protecting A Newly Bought PC

If you just bought a new PC, what should you do first before anything else? I think there are many answers out there, but for me, it will be protecting your PC from any malicious software such as spyware, adware, rootkit, malware and so on.

So, what is the first step that you should do before anything else?

The first thing that you need to do is to turn on the Windows Firewall. Even though it's not that good, but at least it can protect you from some threats rather than you're surfing online naked.

After that, you can find better firewall from the Internet. There are many firewalls that are free to download. Just search it on Google and you'll find it. I recommend you to use Comodo Firewall Pro or ZoneAlarm.

However, using firewalls also need you to have some knowledge about the processes that are running in your PC. Because if you don't know which process is malicious and which is not, that could become a problem.

If you want to know which process is malicious and which is not, open your task manager, find the running processes tab and search for each process on Google. That should give you some idea.

After that, if you find unknown process trying to send information out or trying to get in, you will know it if it's malicious or not.