Don’t take the bait

In phishing scams, criminals send email messages that appear to come from legitimate sources like your bank or some other reputable company. They can also appear in the form of popups caused by spyware infections on your PC. The messages which can look very authentic, instruct you to follow an enclosed web link usually to “confirm your account” or “verify your information immediately.” But the link actually sends you on to a counterfeit website that looks like the real one.

Whatever you do, don’t click that link! You could be giving away the keys to your financial accounts, your personal information, and your computer. Your bank would never ask you to enter your username and password via an email link or popup window so ignore any requests to do so. This goes for other large organisations such as eBay and Amazon too. Never enter your personal details unless you are absolutely sure you are dealing with a genuine website.

Spyware Infections

In May of this year, Google surveyed billions of sites, subjecting 4.5 million pages to “in-depth analysis” and discovered one in 10 web pages contained malicious code that could infect a user’s PC. This shows that it is therefore possible to infect your computer by simply visiting a website! Such infections can result in phishing popups as already discussed. Worse still, if not attended to, spyware can seriously damage your operating system. The best way to deal with this problem is to cleanup your system with anti-virus and anti-spyware programs. Hopefully, you are already protected with an anti-virus program but it is also very important to have anti-spyware protection.

An excellent and free anti-spyware product is Spybot Search & Destroy. This is an excellent program that can deal with the majority of spyware infections. It can also ‘immunise’ your system against thousands of potential threats. It’s recommended that a PC or laptop is scanned for spyware at least once a month.