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Making your computer as safe as possible can be easy by keeping information secure, both outgoing and incoming, by being careful, and by using software wisely.
Don’t Provide Information
Three things to keep in mind about information and computers.
First, a legitimate company will not request personal information via email. Banks, insurance companies, investment companies, and credit card companies either do or don’t have all your information, they don’t have only part of it. If you really think that a request for information is valid, go to the company’s website or call the company at the contact number they have given you and ask them to tell you what information they have for you, and you can verify that it is or is not correct. In addition, most companies, if they need action from you, will request that you visit their website and login to your account rather than get to their website via an email link.
For example, requests for credit card numbers via email should never be answered. Most emails requesting credit card numbers say the purpose of the request for the credit card number is for verification. The reason why unsuspecting recipients often answer this request is that the first four digits of a credit card are often an indicator of the type of credit card, that is Master Card, Visa, etc., and are easy to determine. The holder of the credit card may think that the email sender must really need verification of the credit card number if the sender already knows the first four numbers, but this is not the case. Do not reply to credit card number requests via email.
Probably the most well-known and successful scam requesting personal information via email is the Nigerian government scam. For this scam, an email arrives from a person in Nigeria who has a large amount of money. The senders of the email are willing to share the money with you if you help them get it out of the country by giving them your bank account number, which they use to steal, not to share. A man in Volusia County Florida lost $350,000 by replying to this email with his bank account number.
Second, email that redirects you to a website requesting personal information can be just as illegitimate as an email that requests personal information. Would you surf the web and randomly enter personal information on various websites without reviewing the sites’ privacy policies? Probably not, yet people see a website in an email and automatically believe the email legitimizes the website. Remember that a valid, legitimate website lists its information gathering and distribution policies on a Privacy Notice page including what they do with your information, to whom they pass your information, from whom they get information about you, what kind of information is passed, and how you can request that your information is kept private. And most importantly, legitimate websites don’t randomly solicit you for information, they wait until you visit the sites on your own.
Third, if a company does need you to be aware of a major change in their processes that includes personal information, they will give you plenty of lead time, not a single email. For example, we recently received an email supposedly from our Internet provider indicating that their email server would be down within two hours for 24 hours and that we needed to re-direct our email to a particular email address. Several red flags indicated that this was a hoax. First, any Internet provider that didn’t give businesses and personal users more than two hours notice would not be in business for long. Second, a look at our Internet provider’s website gave no indication that their email servers would be down. Third, a call to the Internet provider company indicated that no email outage would be taking place. In the past, when our Internet company has had to make a major change, they warned us six months in advance and then updated us more frequently as the day approached. You would be suspicious if someone came to your door and said they were from the US Postal Service, and you should redirect your snail mail to an alternate address. You need to be as suspicious with computer requests as well.
Don’t Download Unknown Information
How many times have you accessed a website and gotten a pop-up window requesting that you download some software for the website to display properly? This is another request you need to analyze carefully before you automatically respond. The download may contain a virus or a program that can use your computer resources for illegal purposes. Most websites display just fine without requiring any additional downloads. However, it is possible that the download is legitimate. The two most popular legitimate download requests on websites are for the Adobe Acrobat reader that allows you to read PDF formatted files, and Flash plug-ins that allow web designers to integrate video, text, audio, and graphics on the website. The pop-up download requests for Adobe and Flash have information about the download rather than just a few or no lines of identification and explanation that false download requests do. Again, if you aren’t sure whether or not to respond to a download request, go to the source to download the necessary software. For example, you can go to http://www.adobe.com to  download a free version of the Adobe Acrobat reader or to download a free version of the Flash Player.
Put Up a Firewall
Firewalls are just like a door with a lock on your business - they both are the first defense against intruders. Without a firewall, or a locked door, you get little sympathy from others when someone breaks into your computer or your business. A firewall on a computer is like a security guard at the door of your business. The firewall examines anything that wants to come into or goes out from your computer and, using a set of rules, determines whether or not it is safe to let the data into or out of your computer.
The best-known firewall, and one of the top rated is Norton Personal Firewall, which is available from Symantec for $50. The top rated firewall that is free for personal use is ZoneAlarm ($40-$50 for business use). For more reviews of firewalls including which firewalls to avoid, go to http://www.firewallguide.com. Note that Symantec and several other vendors also have suites of security software bundled together, such as a firewall, anti-virus software (discussed in Issue No. 11 of Info Point), and additional computer security software.
Being careful with business and personal information and downloads and using a firewall are additional ways to make sure your computer remains in your hands and not in the hands of someone with ulterior motives. Simple steps such as those outlined above, like a locked door, can help you make your computer and business less prone to destruction.
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