Tell me one thing that you can’t do or find out online (I’ll give you a pat on the back). You can now pay your bills online, check your phone usage details, find out what your friend is doing, meet a long lost kindergarten friend, order a pizza with your own toppings, and even finding out how to replace an iPhone sim card in YouTube (yes I did this a few months ago lol).
Admit it, we are in the era of technology where we can’t live without being online in a day (or even in one hour!). I remember back in the 90s where I needed to go to the library, reading those old rusty books for my research. Now everybody goes online to find online journals, wikipedia, or online articles through the search engines.
Some of us may not realize though, that danger lurks around every corner of our great virtual life.
Spam, Spam, Spam
If you never get any spam in your inbox or blog comments, then you deserve my second pat on the back. Each day I receive tips about the lovely juicy Acai Berry for my diet or even ways to satisfy my woman (not that I have one anyway). It saps your time and your concentration especially at work. You’ll often get distracted by “You’ve got a new message” pop-up only to find out that “You’ve got a new spam”. Congratulations! Even a more frustrating moment, is when genuine emails being caught on your spam folder. How many has the time to go through 50 spam emails on the spam folder just to make sure?
If only advertisement & affiliate companies stop giving incentives in email marketing, then spam might stop (I said “might”).
A depressed poor man clicking on a Viagra link only to be taken to a hacked site full with bits and pieces trying to get into your computer and wreak havoc. From a depressed poor man looking for pleasure becomes an even more depressed poor man as a victim of hackers’ pleasure.
Impersonation
I’ve recently got notification emails from “Bank of America”. Nice. I was scratching my head thinking when on earth have I ever deposited my money to Bank of America. Some time ago though, it was even scarier because I got an email claiming to be from a major bank here in Australia. A non techie person might click on the link because the link text was actually displaying the bank’s real URL. A techie person will roll over his/her mouse cursor on the link only to find that the domain name URL has been spoofed.
But again, how many people know about this? If you are lucky, your browser will give you a warning of such spoof sites but luck doesn’t come every single day.
Software Vulnerabilities
This is not really your fault and no matter how much you pay for a software, you can never get away with security loopholes. Staying up to date with everything is a good thing, since most likely the latest update will fix a loophole in a software before it falls into such vulnerabilities. But again, new updates mean new challenges for hackers to find new ways to get around it. It’s the same war battled by antivirus companies trying to hold a steady line of defense against more and more malicious viruses and trojans created every day.
My ramblings conclusion
The web is pretty and it gives you easy access to things that you could have never done before. It’s great. However, keep that warning hat on and beware of the danger that lurks around the corner. Be smart, be safe, and be up to date 
Thanks for my loyal reader from Megaphase.info (what’s your name, man?) that inspired me to write about this post. He also shares other good articles for you to read about these issues:
- Comcast adopts DNS hijacking, imposes irritating opt-out
- Vulnerabilities Allow Attacker to Impersonate Any Website
- Return of the Living Spam: 150,000 Zombies Created Daily, McAfee Says
So anyone deserves a pat (or two pats) on the back?
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
This is really sort of off-point, but there was an excellent article in the Washington Post this weekend about how the recession is affecting Nigerian scammers. Great reporting.
Mark´s last blog ..Study: Children Really ARE Tiny Adults
Hi Mark, can you fix your link? It’s pointing to an invalid URL.
We only receive those Nigerian scammers on our fax machine. Got one saying that we won 1 million dollars or something from the Government. It’s hilarious
Surprised that you don’t advice to install a virus scanner. Don’t know how well they protect against things like phishing in the meantime, but I installed one a year ago.
Did 10 years without one, but it’s getting too risky nowadays.
Luc J´s last blog ..ShowMyPC – Free Remote PC Support For Your Relatives
I had a post some time in the past enforcing people to install an antivirus in their machines. I’m sure no matter how careful you are, I’ll bet that I can find a virus/trojan/worm in your computer if you don’t have an antivirus installed
In the last week I had two ‘friends’ contact me about their computers being infected with viruses and malware of all sorts. I asked them what operating system they had. One managed to get out “windows” but was not able to tell what version. The other told me “dell”. Neither had any antivirus, because they thought the scans were a hassle. The main problem today is the laziness/stupidity of the users.
In my personal experiences, spam filters turn out to be more of a hassle then they are worth. In my primary email, I maybe get one or two spam emails every couple of days and it isn’t hard to find and delete them. However, in the past, I have used many email hosts and alot of times more legitimate emails are caught in the filters than spam emails.
As for protecting yourself from software vulnerabilities, search exploit archives for software you use and see if anything shows up. If it’s critical, uninstall that software and wait for a fix.
Hehe “Dell” operating system. Classic
Well 1 or 2 spam every couple of days? That isn’t much. I can get around 30 a day on my work’s email address if I turned the SpamAssassin off
You are right. i get lot of bank emails which look real. but the link is spoofed where as anchor text looks real..
Nihar´s last blog ..Bhuvan India by ISRO is India’s Google Earth