2008 February | Security, antivirus, anti spyware

What Is Adware?

Adware is one of many “malwares” or malicious software programs that are unknowingly installed on your computer when you visit online sites and download freebies. When you use share files or visit sites with free downloads of wallpaper, videos, or music, some of these sites will send along adware software with your download.

These malwares are a rapidly growing threat to all computer systems. It is estimated that in the first three months of 2005 over 80% of computer users had some type of malware software program running on their computer, without their knowledge.

Although it is much less a threat to your computer and information than spyware is, what adware will do is cause pop up banners and advertisements to appear on your computer. These advertisements are displayed on your computer no matter what program you might be using. What the people who place this type of nuisance software on you computer say is that adware advertising helps them to recover costs and allows them to offer you those freebies you want.

What you want to do to stop adware from appearing on your computer is to first run an anti-adware program. Run this program on demand regularly. Along with an anti-adware software program run your regular computer virus scan on demand also.

Check the security level on your computer. You security level setting should be at least medium to help protect you from unwanted downloads.

Do not download free files from the internet, period. When downloading any software read the end-user license agreement. Some of these agreements will state that when you download their software you are also agreeing to accept a downloaded spyware that may be placed on your computer at the same time.

Be aware of threats to your computer, and your personal information.

February 2, 2008 | Filed Under AdWare | Leave a Comment 

Computer Security - What Exactly Is It?

Although the term ‘computer security’ is used a lot, the content of a computer is actually vulnerable to only a few risks unless the computer is connected to others on a network. As the use of computer networks (especially the Internet) has increased dramatically during the past few years, the term computer security is now used to describe issues referring to the networked use of computers and their resources.

The major technical areas of computer security are confidentiality, integrity and authentication/availability.
- Confidentiality, also known as secrecy or privacy, means that the information you own cannot be accessed by unauthorized parties. Breaches of confidentiality range from the embarrassing to the disastrous.
- Integrity means that your information is protected against unauthorized changes that are undetectable to authorized users. The integrity of databases and other resources are usually compromised through hacking.
- Authentication means that an user is who he claims to be.
- Availability means that the resources are accessible by authorized parties. Examples of availability attacks are the ‘denial of service’ attacks.

Other important things that the computer security professionals are concerned about are access control and nonrepudiation. Access control refer not only to the fact that users can only access the resources and services they are entitled to, but also to the fact that they can’t be denied to access the resources they legitimately expect. Nonrepudiation means that a person who sends a message cannot deny he sent it and vice versa.

In addition to these technical aspects, the concept of computer security is very large. Computer security’s roots are drawn from disciplines like ethics and risk analysis and the major topics that are concerning it are computer crime (tries to prevent, detect and remedy attacks) and identity/anonymity in cyberspace.

Although confidentiality, integrity and authenticity are the most important things when it comes to computer security in general, for everyday internet users, privacy is the most important one, because many people think that they have nothing to hide or the information they give doesn’t seem sensitive when they register with an internet service/site.

But remember that, on the internet, information is very easily shared among companies and small pieces of related information from different sources can be linked together to form something alot more complex about a person. Because of this, nowadays, the ability to maintain control over what information is collected about them, who may use it and how it can be used is extremely important.

February 2, 2008 | Filed Under Security | Leave a Comment