Internet Security Hazards – Part 1, Hazard Spotting
Posted on 16. Nov, 2008 by Mike Halsey in guides and how to's, security
The internet is a dangerous place if you’re not streetwise and tech-savvy. Do you think you’re able to identify all the hazards and dangers you’ll encounter when you’re shopping, checking your email or doing your banking online?
Have a look at the picture below (click on it for a full-size image) and see if you can spot the five hazards and dangers on it.
Could you spot them? Well the answers are in the picture below.
1) The yellow information bar at the top of this window tells you that the website wants to install a plug-in (aka software) on your computer. Did you explicity want this? If its something like the Flash Player or the Acrobat Reader then it will be perfectly safe. But unless you specifically clicked on a link that said something like install the thingy player then you should be very wary of installing anything just because a website wants you to.
2) There’s nothing wrong with this website but it’s asking you to enter credit card information. This particular website is safe because its displaying a padlock. This will either appear in the bottom right of your browser window or at the end of your address bar.
In new browsers, the address bar can change colour to indictate whether a site is safe or not. In the example below the address bar has turned green to indicate that the website is safe to use. If the address bar turns amber you should be more cautious and a red bar means the site is known to be operated by criminals.
3) This website wants you to install a plug-in but rather than pop-up the information bar as in (1) it’s giving you a big message saying you cannot proceed further until you have done so. Unless this is a plug-in you specifically want you should avoid installing it.
4) This is a spam email. You should never click on the links in these as they will either try and fleece you of your money or install a virus on your computer.
5) this information window, signified by the red warning shield, is telling you that there is a security problem with your computer. This is Windows asking you politely to do something about it.
These are simple things you should look out for. One in particular affects YouTube with some videos that ask you to install a plug-in to watch a video. All YouTube video are played using the Flash plug-in and if you can play anything else on the site you already have everything you need to play legitimate content. Don’t ever install anything else.
In the second part of this series, to be published in a couple of days, I’ll talk about what the actual threats are.
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The Long Climb » Coping with toolbar overload
Dec 6th, 2008
[...] spoken about these before in my series on internet security, but before installing an ActiveX control you should ask yourself “Can I not do something on [...]
Miranda Warbritton
Dec 22nd, 2009
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