How to protect yourself and tighten your security?

Why do I need to know how to protect myself and tighten my security?

Why did I get infected in the first place?

You usually get infected because your security settings are too low or you blindly click yes to Everything. This article will show you How to protect yourself and tighten security.

      You usually get infected because your security settings are too low or you blindly click yes to       Everything. This article will show you How to protect yourself and tighten security.

      Here are a number of recommendations that will help to protect yourself and tighten                     Security and which will contribute to making you a less likely victim:

·         Watch what you download! Many freeware programs and P2P programs are Amongst the most notorious, coming with an enormous amount of bundled spyware that will eat system resources, slow down your system, clash with other installed software, or just plain crash your browser or even Windows itself. There is no such thing as a free lunch and many “free” programs on the net contain adware or spyware. Read carefully the EULA before installing anything and if it says “Supported by Advertising” or similar wording be very wary and expect problems and pops ups etc. Be careful what add-ons, toolbars and extensions you install in your browser. Very few of them are needed, useful or safe. All the majority of these add-ons will do will do is slow down browsing and cause unwanted adverts and pop ups on your computer. Be extremely careful when downloading from software sites. A high number of these sites use their own “download manager” which stealthily installs so called “optional” programs that cause pop ups, adverts and search diverts, unless you are scrupulous about watching what it does, and carefully uncheck everything it offers, apart from the program that you actually want.

·         Once a file has been downloaded then scan it with your antivirus, BEFORE opening it as a double check I recommend scanning it at: Kaspersky Application Advisor  which will give a recommendation based on other user input and what the file appears to do. If it is safe then it will say so. Unknown files are automatically given a caution rating and bad files are marked with a red Warning.

·         Set your folder options to “show known file types“. The default for windows is to hide known file types and that way, when you receive an email saying open this picture or read this important document, you don’t see the.exe  at the end. Once you set known file types to show, it is much less likely that you will accidentally click on a malware file & open it, thinking that it is a picture from a friend or a document that you are expecting. This shows you how to set it for Windows 7 or Vista  and this for Windows 8

·         Watch out for sites that insist you need a special codec to watch the video or listen to music on the site. 99% of the time they are trying to install malware. If you already have Windows Media player, Flash, Quick time or Real player installed, there should never be any need to install a special player or codec from the site.

·          Phishing and Identity theft: Be very wary of links in emails allegedly coming from your Bank, Building Society, Insurance Company, PayPal, etc. Hover your mouse over the link to see whether it is the correct Bank website etc. If the address showing in the hovered link isn’t the same as the address it says it is, then don’t click on it. Go to your bank’s website via a known good link.  If you do happen to  accidentally click on a suspicious link, don’t panic, but simply close the browser window and definitely don’t enter any information in the site.

·         Facebook, Google+, Twitter and other Social Networking sites:  Don’t get carried away with what you post on these sites and remember that a lot of what you post will be public and it is rather like walking down the local High Street and shouting out to everyone in earshot, everything that happened last night, your name & address and phone number and where you hide the spare keys to your front door. Never post when you are going away or that the house will be empty overnight. A lot of thieves, fraudsters and other criminals, hang around and monitor Social Networking sites and use the information they gain from them to do lots of nasty things to you. Also remember what you post  can be read by all your friends and often your boss. Don’t let something you wrote when you had a few drinks or you were in a silly or bad mood, come back and bite you, a few weeks, months or years later.