In the past this history was private because it exists only on your PC. But recently it’s been proven that it’s possible for web sites to get a peek into your browser history. This could be a privacy concern for some people. Here’s how it works.

Some people have come up with some clever code they can place on their site. It basically asks your browser if you’ve visited a particular site before. For a demonstration click here and click on the Get Started link in the centre. Don’t worry, nothing bad will happen, it’s just a demonstration.

So how does this affect you?

You just need to be aware that privacy on the internet is fairly limited these days. If you have something to hide (for whatever reason) or you’d just like a bit more privacy, there are steps you can take to prevent this. It’s a bit technical for beginners but with a bit of effort it’s achievable.

• Some browsers now have a “privacy” mode. For example, Google Chrome calls it “incognito”. Privacy mode doesn’t keep track of which sites you’ve been to.
• You can use Firefox and install something called the “NoScript addon”. This will block the code I mentioned above.

But things turned ugly when the person on the phone asked for my account password, so that he could verify he’s talking to the right person. I refused.

I explained that I received an unsolicited call, I don’t know who I’m really speaking to, and that I’m not prepared to give a random stranger my account password.

He’s probably heard this several times so he said he understands, and I could give a few other personal details instead. I refused again. Confused, he put me onto his team leader, or at least someone claiming to be his team leader – I have no way of knowing who I’m speaking to. If I had been the one to initiate the call then I know I’m speaking to the right company. If I receive a call then I don’t know. There’s a fundamental difference here.

The team leader tried to explain they need to confirm who they’re speaking to. She claimed to understand my position, but wouldn’t change her argument. I continued refusing to give my password to a random stranger just so I can hear about new phones.

So we agreed to end the conversation. I wrote Vodafone a complaint using their website, explaining the situation. I’m not sure if the complaint went through because their web page took me to an answer’s and questions page after I’d typed everything out.

It’s not completely the cold-calling people’s fault, they’re doing what they’re paid to do. It’s Vodafone’s problem that they came up with this procedure. They’re giving their customers an expectation that it’s normal for strangers to call them and ask for their passwords.

And if you haven’t worked out the problem yet, look at it this way. I now know that Vodafone customers must be used to receiving unsolicited calls and giving out their passwords. So if I call 20 random people in Australia, chances are at least one will be a Vodafone customer. I just have to say I can offer them a new phone plan if they can give me their password. Then I can call up Vodafone, confirm my identity using that password, change my mailing address, and order a new phone and ask for it to be sent to my residence. I wouldn’t actually do it this way but you get the idea. It’s called identity theft.

I’ve written about the same problem before in 2007, it seems nothing’s changed in the past 2 years.

There are people out there who hack into people’s home PCs (the PCs of ordinary people like you and me). They usually write a virus to do this, or pay someone to write the virus. Then when they’ve hacked into a home PC, they add it to a list.

After a few days they can get about 500,000 home computers on their list (yes, they work very fast). So once the hacker has hundreds of thousands of computers on their list, he writes a program that can control them all at once.

Now keep in mind that most home users won’t know their PC has been hacked. Everything still looks normal.

The hacker then sells this list of PCs to a spammer. The technical word for this list of controlled PCs is called a botnet.

A spammer buys this list of hacked computers and the program that controls them all at once. He uses also buys an email list from someone else (a list with millions of people’s email addresses). He presses a button, and all of the home PCs he’s controlling start sending out spam.

Again, home users don’t know their PC is now being used to send out spam. They might notice their internet go a little slower but most people don’t have the technical skill to work out why. It just gets ignored.

The spammer then sits back, relaxes after doing his 5 minutes of work. If anyone gets caught for sending spam it’ll be the home user, not him. The home user is ignorant of what’s going on. The hacker made his money and will do it again. And the cycle repeats again after a few days.

So how much spam are we talking about?

The largest botnet in operation in June 2009 is sending 74 million spam emails a day, all of this from people’s home computers. That’s a lot of spam.

What can you do?

Don’t let your own computer become part of a botnet. Use a good antivirus product, scan for malware, and fix up any problems.

If you see this email, delete it, it’s just another lottery scam:

Subject: Microsoft Email Promo:Official Prize Notification
To:
Microsoft Email Promo:Official Prize Notification
The MICROSOFT EMAIL PROMO TEAM is glad to announce that
after a successful completion of the PROMO DRAWS held on the
28th June 2009,your e-mail address,attached to winning
numbers:(55) (73) (14)(41) (36) (29) won in the Tenth
lottery category.
You have therefore been approved to claim a total sum of
£150,000,00 GBP(One Hundred and Fifty Thousand Great British Pounds
Sterling) in cash credited to file REF NO:MSW-L/009-28793, BATCH
NO:2009MJL-05, this is from a total prize money of
£3,750,000 (Three Million,Seven hundred and Fifty Thousand
British Pounds Sterling),shared among the Twenty five (25)
international winners in this category.
All participants were selected through our Microsoft computer
ballot system drawn from 167,000 Names,as part of our
International  \"E-MAIL"\ Promotion Program for our prominent
MS-WORD users all over the world and for the continuous use
of the internet. You are advised to contact the claims
processor with the details below via his e-mail address :
NAME:  Michael E Ross
EMAIL: michaele.ross1@yahoo.com.hk
TEL:   +44 703 590 2789
PLEASE NOTE THAT YOU ARE TO SEND THE FOLLOWING INFORMATION TO
CLAIM YOUR WINNINGS:
1.Full Name………………………………
2.Address:………………………………
3.Phone:……………Fax:……………….
4.Country:………………………………
5.Sex/Gender……………………………..
In order to avoid unnecessary delay and complications,please
remember to quote your reference and winning ticket number in
all correspondence with your claims officer.Your secret pin
code is ML0757985.Be warned that cases of double claims and
unwarranted abuse of this program will be legally pursued.
YOURS FAITHFULLY,
JESSICA SCOTT.

The names are no doubt made up, they’re just trying to encourage you to provide your personal details.

It’s bad form, a new computer shouldn’t be popping up ads without your consent. Lenovo generally build good quality machines but this move is ethically wrong.

Click here to see a screenshot of the ad.

So can they spread malware such as viruses? Yes, they certainly can. On many Windows computers, when you plug in a USB drive it does a quick search and it can run programs installed on them. Microsoft calls this a feature.

But malware authors (bad hackers) know all about this and they write malware that runs as soon as the device is plugged into a computer. You won’t know it’s happened, malware can install itself quietly in the background without getting in the way of your work.

So what do you do about it?

• Be cautious about what you plug into your computer
• Have a good anti-virus package installed that can scan these devices for you
• You can disable a feature in Windows that automatically runs programs on these USB drives
• In an office environment a good system administrator can lock down this feature across the entire network

What else can plug into your USB port and carry malware?

• USB Flash drives (also called flash drives, pen drives, thumb drives or USB sticks)
• Digital cameras
• MP3 players (including iPods)
• Mobile phones (cell phones)

And if you’re thinking how can malware get onto a camera, I’ve seen it myself. A friend took their camera to the local shop to print some photos, then lent me the camera so I could help them with something, I detected a virus that installed itself on it from the shop.Yes, it really happens. Take care with USB devices.

Today Facebook have acknowledged the problem and fixed it.

This is a good reminder that when you publish information online, you lose some control over it. If something is so private that you can’t risk others seeing it then don’t publish it.

You can read more about the exploit here.

There are so many ways these days to do a backup. Some common methods are:

• Copy your important files to a flash drive. Flash drives are so cheap these days, they’re reliable and are large enough to hold your most important documents. Backing up is just a matter of dragging your files across using something like Windows Explorer (or the equivalent in your OS)
• Using a built-in backup program. I personally don’t like built-in backup programs, they’re often tricky to use and don’t offer enough features. But systems like Windows come with a built in backup program so you could begin by using it.
• 3rd party backup programs – this is where you get the most value. For a modest fee you can purchase a backup program that will get the job done how you want. I prefer Acronis TrueImage Home because:

• It backs up everything, a complete image of my PC. There won’t be anything left out, and if my hard drive dies I can restore the system exactly how it was
• It’s simple to use
• It has so many features that as my needs change it will be able to provide the backups I need
• It’s not very expensive

Having a good backup is extremely important. There are so many things that can go wrong with computers, from hard drive crashes, theft, to malware that takes your files hostage. Having a backup is common sense, it’s a cheap simple insurance against all the things that can go wrong.

You should also have more than one backup. Using external drives is a good option these days, they’re affordable, and you can keep one at a friend or relative’s house as added insurance.

How not to do backups:

• RAID (disk mirroring, or disk striping) is not a backup. It’s a form of data redundancy, there’s a fundamental difference.
• Overwriting backups – if you only have one backup and you overwrite it every time you do another backup, there’s a brief moment where you have no backups (during the backup itself). I’ve seen it before, the computer dies half way through a backup and you’re left without a working computer and with half a backup. This is no good.
• Relying on Windows System Restore is not good enough. There are still so many things that can go wrong and leave you without your previous files, photos, etc.

So how do you do backups? Post your comments below. We’re also running a poll on backups.

It’s not possible to know but it certainly raises awareness about how safe it is to tell strangers about your travel plans. And this doesn’t just apply to Twitter, but to any social site where you’re giving personal information to strangers.

Read the full article here.

I’ve written about how vulnerable wireless keyboards are. It used to take a lot of skill to hack into a wireless keyboard but now someone’s made it so much simpler. Here are instructions on how to build a wireless keyboard hacking device, complete with the software necessary. This model only works with 27MHz keyboards, which are the older and cheaper kind. It’s quite easy to build this device and to use it.

With a good enough aerial these type of hacks could be done from your neighbouring unit, house, office, or probably from a vehicle parked outside. You won’t know your wireless keyboard’s been hacked.

More modern and expensive keyboards can also be hacked, even those that have stickers on them saying how secure they are. But they take a bit more effort and skill.

I don’t believe in using wireless keyboards, they’re not secure. If you’re using one, it only costs $10 or so to upgrade to a wired one.

Scams are usually designed to excite or shock you, and to make something seem urgent. This has the unfortunate effect in most people of urging them to make rash decisions, to not think things through properly. For example, if you don’t live in Spain and haven’t been there, and haven’t purchased any kind of Spanish lottery ticket, then how could you have possibly won?

And even if you did, how do you suppose they got your email address? If you really did win, they’re most likely to send you a letter, again assuming you really  bought a ticket and registered your name and address.

So why is it that people fall for these scams?

Below is the email I received, it’s fake:

REF NO: HKD/7684/ES/97
BATCH:  YJM879/OLS/09

Winner in the 2nd category of our ONCE LOTERIA  free Net Lottery
Promotional award draws held in May, 2009. I am writing in respect to
your lotto winning prize of ONE MILLION, EUROS(1,000,000.00 Euros) which you won through the email ballot draws in the EUROMILLION Promotional Award in June, 2009 in the second Category prize winnings categories.

We wish to inform you that your total prize money of One Million
(1.000,000.00) Euro has remained unpaid by our treasury and credit office after the initial letter to your address for your payment was not successful.
You are hereby requested to contact your claims agent with your full names,telephone,batch and reference numbers respectively and immediately update your claims process for your payment.
Mr.ADRIANA WOOD,
FOREIGN TRANSFER MANAGER,
QUALITAS DE SEGUROS
MADRID SPAIN
Email:quainfo40@aim.com
TEL: 0034-615-730-594
Accept our felicitations!
Signed:Clara Casadoro
(Events,Draws and Promotion).

If you receive this email, or any similar lottery scam, please be cautious. It’s more likely to be a scam. And if possible try to discuss this with people who are new to the internet (such as the elderly), awareness is a great defence against scams.

If you receive any of the emails shown below, delete them:

Subject: Outlook Setup Notificataion

You have (1) message from Microsoft Outlook

Please re-configure your Microsoft Outlook again.

Download attached setup file and install.

Subject: TheBat Setup Notification

You have (98) message from Outlook Express.

Please re-configure your Outlook Express again.

Download attached setup file and install.

Not only does it install malware, it also asks you for your user ID and password.

Here are some tips to help you avoid this sort of scam:

• When you use any online banking service, look for the padlock icon in your browser. Then click on it, it needs to say your bank’s name, it’s full web address, and shouldn’t show any errors.
• If you receive an email from your bank, don’t click on any links. Instead, open a new web browser and type in your bank’s web address. This way you can’t be tricked into clicking the wrong link.
• Always be wary when you receive unsolicited emails. More often than not they’re scams.
• Use a good antivirus product

If you click, it runs a trojan on your computer that uses your Facebook account to send the same message to all your contacts.

The message has a few variations, such as the ones below:

Veryy veryy funnny videoo of you..;)

Donn’t cryy! Yoour mom wiill nnever see thhis moviee.HA-HA-HA!!

Check out my video: http…etc…

AA-ha-ha, i saw yourr a__ in the internnet! lol My a__ has not been on the internet. My hubby won a nipp

Yoou’ve bbeen fiilmed! Haven’’t you notiiced?Is this whatIra is talking about?

If you see these in Facebook don’t click on it. And tell the person who sent it that their PC might be infected with malware.

When Malware Doctor first starts up it pretends to scan your PC for viruses and other malware. Then it tells you it found a few things that shouldn’t be there.

It then says that you’re using an unregistered version of Malware Doctor and that you need to pay for the full version to remove the malware.

It’s a scam, if you see Malware Doctor on your PC you need to take action to clean your PC.

How does Malware Doctor appear on your PC?

There are viruses that spend their life downloading malware (viruses, trojans, etc) and installing them on your PC. So if you have Malware Doctor on your PC it means you have more malware that keeps installing it. A big problem.

How do you get rid of it?

There’s a procedure here. If this is too technical for you then you’ll need to get your PC serviced.

Always have a good anti-virus product on your PC that prevents all this malware from installing in the first place. It’s easier to prevent malware than it is to fix.

Whether you live in Australia or anywhere else in the world, changing your password is always a good idea. Below are some do’s and don’ts for passwords:

• Do use numbers in the password
• Do make it difficult to guess
• Do make up words, or misspell words
• Do make it at least 8 characters

• Don’t put a “1” at the end of the password, this is too common
• Don’t use a word that you could find in a dictionary
• Don’t use the same password on every site. Web sites you use every day (e.g. Facebook, email) should always have a unique password, they’re more at risk.

To help you work out if your password is good you could try using a password meter. Click here for more information.

And you can use a password safe to keep track of all your complicated passwords. Click here for more information on password safes.

What are your suggestions for choosing strong passwords? Add your comments below and I’ll put them all together in a new article dedicated to choosing good passwords.

Often these same sites will ask for other passwords, in an effort to help you find more of your friends and family. For example, when you sign up to Badoo.com it asks you for your MSN username and password. They do this so they can log into MSN with your account, get a list of your contacts, and invite them to join Badoo. Facebook can do this too only on a grander scale.

It’s good in theory but there are some large risks involved. When you sign up and are prompted to enter your MSN details (or any other account), consider these questions:

• Who runs Badoo? Is it some guy sitting at home with no one to answer to?
• Do you trust the company (such as Badoo) and all of their employees?
• What is their privacy policy? Who are they accountable to if they breach their privacy policy?
• Do they store your MSN password? (You have no way of knowing this for sure)
• Have their servers been hacked and is someone else also capturing your password? (Again you have no way of knowing this, web sites get hacked every day)

You can see where this is leading. If you enter your other passwords into someone’s web site you’ve lost control and put yourself at some risk.

So when you sign up to a new site and it asks you for other passwords you already have, your initial reaction should be to refuse. Then consider if the benefits of doing so are worth the risk.

I’d like to thank our regular reader Nick for bringing this issue up.

St George is an Australian bank and this email’s designed to catch out their customers and to steal their online banking details.

Below is a copy of the email:

Restore your Internet Banking Access

As a result of too many incorrect attempts to access Internet Banking, your access to this service has been locked. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

Please logon to your account and restore your access as soon as possible.

Internet Banking: Restore Access

Like all phishing attempts it’s designed to strike some fear and sense of urgency into account holders. Fear and urgency often cause people to make irrational decisions, and possibly to click on the link and quickly type in their banking details before realising they’re on a fake site.

Because this email’s been around for some time a lot of web browsers, email clients, and anti-virus products will block it. If it hasn’t been blocked on your system then you really need to upgrade your software.

Here’s the email:

For security reasons we have sent you this message as an attachment file. This measure has been adopted to prevent personal information theft and data loss. Please do not reply to this e-mail. Mail sent to this address cannot be answered. For assistance, log in to your PayPal account and choose the "Help" link in the footer of any page. To receive email notifications in plain text instead of HTML,update your preferences. 

PayPal Email ID PP694

If you see this just delete it. Don’t open the attachment and certainly don’t type your PayPal login details onto the web page it sends you to.

The link takes you to a web page that “looks like” Citi Prepaid Services, however it’s run by hackers and used to collect your login details (this is called phishing).

Below is the scam email:

Dear Ecount Citi Prepaid Services Member,

Due to concerns, for safety and integrity of the online banking community we have issues this warning message.

It has come to our attention that your account information needs to be updated due to inactive members, frauds and spoof reports. If you could take 5 – 10 minutes out of your online experience, and renew your records you will not run into future problems with the online service.

NOTE: THIS NOTIFICATION EXPIRES ON MAY 17, 2009.

Once you have updated your account records, your internet banking service will not be interrupted and will continue as normal.

Please click the link bellow and renew your account information

Scammers obviously have terrible English skills (though they’ve gotten better in the last couple of years). The email shown above has at least 2 grammatical errors and at least 1 spelling error. Maybe they should spend some of that stolen money to pay for better education.

Even if you’re not a customer of the service above, this serves as a reminder that scammers never give up sending out these phishing emails. Always be wary of emails that try to scare or shock you into clicking a link.

Instead of clicking on their link, open a new web browser and type in your bank’s web site. Trust your own memory (or better yet a bookmark) rather than an unsolicited email.

You can also use a good anti-virus package that scans web pages for scams such as this one. And modern web browsers such as Chrome can also filter out some scams as well, so keep upgrading your browsers.

1. Twitter – You can follow us on Twitter by clicking here http://twitter.com/fraudo and clicking on Follow. You’ll need a Twitter account first. You’ll also be able to ask us questions and take part in more interactive conversations.

2. Facebook – We now have a Facebook group you can join, http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=85420406438 . You can ask questions here, share articles you come across, and learn more about everything FraudO stands for.

And of course we have all the other ways you can subscribe and follow our news:

3. You can subscribe by email. Near the top right corner of our website is a place to enter your email address. You’ll be sent a confirmation email to confirm your address. And we promise we won’t spam you, you’ll only receive updates of new articles and posts.

4. RSS – If you use an RSS newsreader you can subscribe to our feed at http://fraudo.com/feed/ . If you don’t have an RSS newsreader you can starting using one for free at http://www.google.com/reader . You just need a Google account (also free).

And of course you could refresh our page every day or two. There are now 289 articles on this site. To save you the time and effort of always refreshing this page try out one of the systems shown above.

We also rely heavily on search engines such as Google. Many people receive a scam email and copy & paste it into Google to work out if it’s a scam or not. Google usually puts FraudO articles near the top (Google is showing a bit of faith in us). Then they’ll be able to read our article explaining the scam. In fact we get thousands of enquiries through Google, so that’s thousands of people we’ve helped identify scams.

At the end of every article on FraudO you have the chance to leave comments. Some people like to share their own experiences, or to ask questions. Whatever it is, you’re welcome to add your own comments.

We also have a live chat system. This is hosted by Quayport, our affiliate and IT services provider. You can chat with an engineer about any security or scam concerns you have. It’s available for a few hours a day. The chat system can be found at http://fraudo.com/support/chat/

Then there’s our enquiry form. Replies can be a bit slower but you’re more than welcome to send your enquiries. Please use the form provided at http://fraudo.com/support/contact/

We also tried a forum type system but it hasn’t been very successful. It’s still up but we’ll eventually replace it with something better. It can be found at http://fraudo.com/support/forums/

Well, that’s enough for an admin update. As you can see we’ve made it as easy as possible for you to keep on top of scams. It’s a dangerous world out there on the internet. The best thing you can do is to keep learning about all the scams, fraud, etc, and how to keep your PC safe from malware. Help spread the word and to fight the good fight.

Don’t click on this site, it asks you for your Twitter account name and password. If you were to hand over your Twitter account details it then sends the same message from your account.

Always be very careful when handing over your account details to unknown web sites.

Your details are then used for fraudulent activities, under your name (this is called identity theft). It’s also common for the scammer to start asking you for money – there’s usually an excuse that they need to pay lawyers or some other convoluted story.

Below is the scam email, if you see this just delete it:

Hello

Secure $20k in Govt Grants and you never need to pay it back.

All American residents can apply for Govt Grants.

Allotment of grants doesnt depend on your credit history.

The strength of our firm is grants writing.We’re doing business since 1999 and we have helped around 20,000 people obtain grants.

Our company is taking fees of 10% only after our clients receive funds from Govt.There’s no risk for you at all.You’re paying our fees only when you’ve received grant money in your bank account.

Send us details including first name, last name, address, profession, date of birth, annual income, reason for govt grant.

grantswriting27@mail.com
Reply back to this email.

Regards

Johnathon Hodge

This new one’s the kind that asks you for money, it’s called System Security. It begins when you download the program believing it’s a new anti-virus product. It’s designed for Windows PCs.

When you install it, it pretends to scan your PC, then informs you it found a whole lot of malware on your PC including viruses, adware and spyware. This part is meant to scare and shock you.

Then it does something truly evil, it stops you doing anything on your PC until you “activate” the anti-virus. And by activate they mean pay them money. So at this stage the only thing you can do with your PC is go to the scammer’s website (which looks nice and professional), hand over your credit card details, and they’ll supposedly make your PC work again.

If you happen to download and install this fake product and it blocks your PC from working, don’t give them your credit card details or otherwise pay for it to be unlocked. You will be able to boot your PC in Safe Mode – ask for a PC technician to help you with this if necessary. You’ll then be able to remove the fake anti-virus.

This highlights the importance of using a good anti-virus product, one that’s known and respected in the IT industry. I generally try not to recommend one product over another but below are some of the trusted anti-virus companies available today:

• Trend Micro
• Symantec / Norton
• McAfee
• F-Secure
• AVG

There are many more and the market’s always changing. Feel free to write about your preferred products in the comments below. These days you can buy them online or walk into a computer store and buy one.

With this type of scam the sender tries to start a conversation with you, sending you many emails with similarly broken English and a collection of photos. There’s also a tale about how poor she is and eventually she’ll ask you for money.

In reality it’s probably a guy, not a girl. And the emails generally have Russian addresses.

Again, remember not to reply to these or fall for the story. It’s just a scam, one of many on the internet.

Here’s a copy of one of these emails:

Hello my new friend! You probably will be very much surprised to my letter. And where I could find your electronic address. One of these days I was registered a site of acquaintances. And today to me from him there has come the reference with your address. In it it was spoken, that we with you harmonious pair. And I have decided to write to you this letter. My name is Elena, me of 27 years. My growth of 168 sm, my weight of 53 kg. I the quiet, romantic girl. I want to meet in the life the present love. In my opinion, At all a variety of nationalities occupying our planet. In the world there is that uniqu person, With which I can find happiness and family rest. My dream, it to create family, To leave in marriage for remarkable the man, to give birth to children. And together with the loved person To aspire to bring up ours with it children that they became the most remarkable people. Actually I very modest girls and vulnerable. To me to not like, when people to face speak one, And behind a back another is completely. And I think, that from the very beginning of ours with you of acquaintance. We should be fair with each other. As in the first letter, I want to send you the photo. I hope that it to like you. If you were interested with my letter. And you as well as I want to meet the present love in the life. That I think to us with you it is necessary to begin ours with you acquaintance. Who knows, it is possible we are really harmonious with you. Also we shall create the best in the world a pair.

The email has an attachment that is supposed to be an invoice. Instead the attachment infects your PC with a virus that waits for you to use internet banking then steals your password.

The email reads:

Dear client!

The money transfer you have sent on the 12th of April was not collected by the recipient. Due to the Western Union regulation the transfers which are not received in 15 days are to be returned to sender.

To collect money you need to print the invoice attached to this email and visit the nearest Western Union branch.

Thank you!

If you see this email, or one similar to it, delete it. Western Union didn’t really send it. And don’t open the attachment.

Tell-tale signs of a scam email:

• There are a few grammatical errors in the email. It’s common for scammers to have poor English skills (though they’re getting better)
• Did you send money with Western Union in the past 15 days? If not then it’s almost definitely a scam. Don’t be tempted.
• If you’re unsure, copy & paste parts of the email into Google. Then read through the results looking for evidence of known scams.

You should also be scanning your email for spam and malware. This will filter out most of the scams before you have a chance to read them.

There was another Western Union scam that has been quite popular, read about it here.

What’s wrong with Torrents?

• Don’t download Windows from file sharing systems such as BitTorrent. Get it from Microsoft or one of their vendors.
• If you download free operating systems such as Linux from torrents know how to do a checksum test.
• Don’t use pirated software. Apart from being immoral and illegal, pirated software is often plagued with malware.

What if you already downloaded Windows 7 RC from BitTorrent? The safest thing to do is to download it again from Microsoft’s site, reformat your PC, and reinstall the official version. It can be safely downloaded from: http://www.microsoft.com/Windows/Windows-7/download.aspx As a side note I’d like to point out that Windows 7 RC is a test version, it’s not the finished product. And while it’s free for now it has a couple of restrictions:

• on 1 March 2010 it will start rebooting every 2 hours
• on 1 June 2010 it will completely stop working.

Update: There are now 25,000 PCs infected with the malware as a result of downloading the wrong copy of Windows 7 RC. These 25,000 PCs are being controlled by hackers as part of a botnet.

The malware found on this device is designed to steal passwords. More detailed info here.

It’s unfortunate that these days many devices have been shipped from the factory with viruses and other malware, such as digital photo frames and MP3 players.

Hello

If you click on it, it links to a site called 151-im. Don’t click on this message. It takes you to a copy of Facebook, asks you for your Facebook username and password, then steals that information.

Facebook’s response to this was:

"This is a phishing attack. We’re well aware of it and are already blocking links to these new phishing sites from being shared on Facebook. We’re also cleaning up phony messages and Wall posts and resetting the passwords of affected users…”

A few days ago Twitter users were asked to take part in a “game” called #twitterpornnames. How does it work? You’re supposed to announce a made-up name along with the hash tag and share it. The formula provided to create your name just happens to match some very common security questions to help people reset their passwords. Pet’s name. First teacher. Street you grew up on.

So when people started participating they were in fact sharing the same information used by web sites to reset passwords. It’s called social engineering. It tricked people into revealing sensitive information. And the nature of Twitter is that people share information and click on links without much thought (is this a Gen-Y thing?)

If you use Twitter and see these sort of “games” going around, don’t share private sensitive data so easily. This same data can be used to hack into your accounts.

The short answer is yes.

A botnet is a collection of infected PCs under a hacker’s control. There are millions of PCs today forming these botnets (millions of infected home computers being controlled by hackers). Some new research on botnets shows that they sometimes include code to completely disable the PC.

In April 2009 a malicious hacker decided to “kill” the PCs he was controlling using a botnet. It disabled Windows on 100,000 computers, making all those PCs useless until a technician can repair it. (This is a slight simplification but for the general public it’s accurate enough). These 100,000 computers belonged to real people using their computers at home or at the office. One day it just stopped working because a malicious hacker thought it’d be fun. You can read more detailed information about this here.

And then there are other malware (viruses etc) that can damage the PC in more serious ways. In March 2009 researches created a sample malware that writes itself to the computer’s BIOS (the BIOS is inside a chip inside the PC) . Reformatting the PC won’t remove it, buying a new hard drive won’t remove it either, and they claim that even a “BIOS flash” won’t remove it. You’d have to buy a new PC (or if you’re technical, a new motherboard) to fix it. More info here.

In the past there have been viruses that could damage drives and monitors but there’s been very little of this lately.

So overall malware can cause your PC to visit a repair shop for servicing, which is not only an inconvenience but also costly. It’s always better to prevent malware than to repair the damage (and often you may not know a PC is infected). And the usual tips apply here:

• Use a good anti-virus package, the kind that updates itself several times a day and scans web pages as well as files. They’re not expensive.
• Always patch and update your programs, including your operating system (Windows, Linux, Mac OS X).
• Never assume it can’t happen to you or that your computer is somehow better than others.
• Use one of the newer browsers such as FireFox, Chrome, or Opera. Read about browser hacking here.
• Don’t download programs from hacker sites such as password generators (they’re usually infected with malware).
• Don’t be tricked into installing something to watch a funny video. If your computer can’t play the video as it is then it’s probably not worth watching. Read more about it here.
• Don’t be tricked by fake anti-virus programs. Examples here.
• And backup your files. Do this often.

Nigerian scams are emails (or letters) telling you that some random stranger in Nigeria wants to give you a very large sum of money, and they need your help (and your money) to make it happen.

And some people are starting a trend in baiting the scammers, making them waste time and giving them misleading information, just for amusement. It’s a vigilante action fraught with real danger hence why I don’t recommend it. But it’s certainly interesting to read about it.

Click here for the full article.

Sometimes hackers find innocent web sites and find a way to hack it and add malware. Below is an example. A (fake) message comes up telling you your PC is infected:

Warning!!! Your computer contains various signs of viruses and malware programs presence. Your system requires immediate anti viruses check! System Security will perform a quick and free scanning of your PC for viruses and malicious programs.

Notice that the message is full of grammatical mistakes, scammers generally aren’t very good at English.

If you see a message like this click Cancel and close the window.

Like most scams, there’s an incentive to catch your attention – in this case it’s a $150 credit. This kind of scam is called phishing.

The fake survey asks a set of questions, then asks for your full name, credit card number and PIN. Never give this out in a survey!

After you enter all your details, it takes you to the real KMart’s web page so that you don’t suspect anything. Then criminals will use your credit card details to make expensive purchases.

How to identify the fake survey:

• An email is sent to you with the subject "You have been selected"
• The link in the email doesn’t point to KMart, it points to a web site with the word epiqteen in the URL
• The body of the email is:

You have been selected to access the Kmart Holiday Survey and win a $150.00 gift certificate.
Please click here and complete the form to claim your prize. Thank you.

To prevent these attacks:

• Use one of the "other" web browsers, such as FireFox, Opera and Chrome. These have better technology at detecting phishing sites.
• Install a good anti-virus package, one that scans web sites as well as files. This a paid service and you usually get a good up-to-date list of phishing sites, and it works automatically in the background. The small cost is a great investment for your security.
• Be very cautious of generous offers (I don’t think many companies can afford to give $150 to all their customers right now).
• When you see a suspicious email, copy and paste its contents into Google. Then read through the results to determine if it’s a scam. E.g., Google indexes all of Fraudo’s pages, so any scams I write about here will show up on a Google search.
• Never give out your credit card details in surveys.
• Read the URL carefully. The URL is the address shown at the top of your web browser. If it’s not the exact name of a legitimate company then be suspicious.

One such PDF file was found to have a password stealing malware hidden in the code that installs itself using a vulnerability in Adobe Reader. After it installs the malware it then opens a legitimate document with information about swine flu.

The document is called The Association of Tibetan journalists Press Release.pdf

If you see this in an email delete it without opening it, and let the sender know that it contains a password stealer.

This is wrong. The people that hacked this installer are just trying to make money from your SMS’s. At the moment it’s been detected in the French version of VLC but it could apply to any language.

The real VLC player never asks you to send an SMS. The real VLC player can be downloaded from: http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

If you download it from anywhere else you end up putting your PC at risk. Always download files from the original vendor’s web site. You can search Google to find it.

There’s a free trial and a full (paid) version. The free trial is enough to help clean your PC. The paid version will help prevent future infections.

Today they announced that this product has cleaned 1 billion PCs over the past few years. That’s quite impressive. And it’s also scary to think that 1 billion people had their PCs infected with malware – if only they would read Fraudo and prevent the infections

You can download it here.

ATM skimming usually involves someone attaching 2 devices to an ATM:

1. A device to read your bank card number
2. A device to record you typing in your PIN

They attach these devices to the ATM and make it look convincing enough that most people won’t notice they’re there.

In the past the scammers would come back in a few hours and take away the devices so they can retrieve the information. And sometimes the police would be there waiting for them to return. Today crooks have gotten smarter and attach mobile phones to send the information to their own phone. This way they don’t have to return to the scene of the crime.

So the real problem is, how do you know if an ATM has these skimming devices attached? Below is a presentation prepared for a local bank in Australia. No matter which bank you use the information in this report is useful.

It’s easy to read through the presentation and won’t take up much of your time, and it’s full of interesting photos of card skimmers. You can find it here:

PowerPoint presentation: here.

It’s a plugin for FireFox and Internet Explorer. It checks every web page you load, and if it’s a known dangerous site it stops it from loading, protecting you before any malware gets a chance to run.

This is very useful if:

1. Your main web browser is FireFox or Internet Explorer, and
2. You use Windows, and
3. You haven’t invested in a good anti-virus package.

It’s a fact that a lot of malware (including viruses, spyware, adware, etc) installs itself when you visit a hacked page. Most of the time you won’t know it’s happening – it’s important to install something that helps protect you.

Download it for free from: http://linkscanner.avg.com/

• Keep a spy eye on your Girlfriend’s mobile
• Do you want to catch a cheating girlfriend?
• You can read anyone’s SMS
• Read his messages

Lines such as the ones above might catch someone’s curiosity. If they click on a link they’re presented with a fake web page for their SMS spying software. The fake site says,

Get Your Free 30-Day Trial!

Do you want to test your partner or just to read somebody’s SMS? This program is exactly what you need then! It’s so easy! You don’t n3eed to install it at the mobile phone of your partner. Just download the program and you will be able to read all SMS when you are online. Be aware of everything! This is an extremely new service!

The download actually installs malware on your PC.

1. You click on a link to a web page. This web page has been hacked but you don’t know that.
2. A message comes up on your screen telling you that you might have malware on your PC.
3. You click on a button to start their scanning program. It pretends to do a scan of your PC. This fake program can be called AntiVirus2009, FileFixerPro, or FileFix Professional.
4. In the background it’s going through everything in your My Documents folder and encrypting all of the files. The encrypted files are now useless to you.
5. A message comes up asking you for $50 to get a program that will unencrypt your files.
6. If you pay, you may or may not receive a program that unencrypts them. The hackers would also then have your credit card details.

It’s a terrible situation to be in.

There are quite a few things you can do right now to prevent this from happening:

• Make a backup of your files. If you’ve never made a backup before then try to do it today, don’t waste time. If you ever lose your files, or you’re a victim of ransomware, you can just recover from your backup.
• When unexpected windows popup asking to do a scan of your PC, have a good think who’s asking. It’s an unsolicited request, so it’s probably a scam.
• Install a good anti-virus package. One that scans every web page you access.
• Start using one of the alternative web browsers, such as Chrome, Opera, FireFox, or Safari. These four browsers are better at detecting hacked web pages and at preventing malicious code from running. (They’re better than IE but not 100% safe).
• Keep reading Fraudo to stay on top of these scams. You can subscribe to the RSS feed or by email (the email option is on the top right corner of this page).

And if you’re unfortunate enough to have this happen to you, there’s a free tool that may be able to recover your files. I bolded the word may because the hacker’s technology is getting better all the time and if they did things right it would be impossible to unencrypt it without paying. But for now you can try the method shown on this page.

If you receive the Twitter message shown below and click on the profile, some code runs in your web browser and it starts sending the same message to others. You don’t need to go to a 3rd party web site, making it a little different (and much riskier).

The Twitter message is:

Twitter, hire Mikeyy!

If you receive this, remove it or ignore it (depending on your client).

Incidentally, Mikey is the person who wrote the StalkDaily Twitter worm. And it’s unconfirmed who wrote this one.

• I love www.stalkdaily.com
• wow… www.stalkdaily.com
• Join www.stalkdaily.com everyone!
• Hey everyone, join www.stalkdaily.com. It’s a test site like Twitter but with pictures, videos, and so much more!
• Woooo, www.stalkdaily.com
• Virus? What? www.stalkdaily.com is legit!
• Dude, www.stalkdaily.com is awesome. What’s the fuss?

If you click on the link some code runs in the background that sends the same messages but from your own Twitter account.

Is it harmful? No, it was a publicity stunt by a site called StalkDaily. This is what a worm is, something that spreads through the internet similar to a virus but without infecting files. It’s still not a good thing to have around.

In this case it’s harmless but it could have been harmful. By the time you click the damage could have been done.

Firstly, Microsoft is not in the lottery business. So it can’t be real.

Secondly, did you really enter this lottery? You couldn’t have since it doesn’t exist. If you didn’t enter the fake lottery then you should not start believing you’ve won something.

Thirdly, if you really did win the huge amount of money this scam claims, they wouldn’t tell you by email. Email is an insecure system, they’d just call you or post a letter to you.

And lastly, Microsoft (or any other pretend lottery company) wouldn’t use a free Yahoo email in Hong Kong. They’d have an office and you’d be able to look up the office’s phone number in the phone book.

Below is the scam email:

OFFICIAL PRIZE NOTIFICATION
The MICROSOFT EMAIL PROMO TEAM is glad to announce that
after a successful completion of the PROMO DRAWS held on the
6th April 2009,your e-mail address,attached to winning
numbers:(55) (73) (14)(41) (36) (29) won in the Tenth
lottery category.
You have therefore been approved to claim a total sum of
£150,000,00 GBP(One Hundred and Fifty Thousand Great British Pounds
Sterling) in cash credited to file REF NO:MSW-L/009-28793,
BATCH NO:2009MJL-05, this is from a total prize money of
£3,750,000 (Three Million,Seven hundred and Fifty Thousand
British Pounds Sterling),shared among the Twenty five (25)
international winners in this category.
All participants were selected through our Microsoft computer
ballot system drawn from 167,000 Names,as part of our
International  \"E-MAIL"\ Promotion Program for our prominent
MS-WORD users all over the world and for the continuous use
of the internet. You are advised to contact the claims
processor with the details below via his e-mail address :
NAME:  Michael E Ross
EMAIL: <removed>@yahoo.com.hk
TEL:   <removed>
PLEASE NOTE THAT YOU ARE TO SEND THE FOLLOWING INFORMATION TO
CLAIM YOUR WINNINGS:
1.Full Name………………………………
2.Address:………………………………
3.Phone:……………Fax:……………….
4.Country:………………………………
5.Sex/Gender……………………………..
In order to avoid unnecessary delay and complications,please
remember to quote your reference and winning ticket number in
all correspondence with your claims officer.Your secret pin
code is ML0757985.Be warned that cases of double claims and
unwarranted abuse of this program will be legally pursued.

If you see this email delete it. It’s a scam.

The following versions of PowerPoint are affected:

• PowerPoint 2000 Service Pack 3
• PowerPoint 2002 Service Pack 3
• PowerPoint 2003 Service Pack 3
• Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac

If you’re using PowerPoint 2007, just the PowerPoint Viewer (not the full version), or Office 2008 for Mac, then you’re safe.

If you receive spam with an attached PowerPoint file delete it.

Here is Microsoft’s advisory about this problem.

The program does not generate any Wii points. It’s a scam that installs a trojan that then downloads more malware.

There are also videos on YouTube that claim to show you how to create XBox points and iTunes gift cards. These are also scams that install viruses.

When you install it, it adds something to your Mac so that every 5 hours it will try to download malware. So if your Mac becomes infected with malware and you clean it, in 5 hours it’ll download another one. This is pretty common these days.

So if you come across MacCinema don’t install it. And if a web site tells you that you need to install something to watch their videos, don’t trust it (this applies to Mac OS X, Linux, and Windows).

The scam phone calls involve a story about the ATO or Centrelink needing their details to process the handout. They ask for the person’s name, date of birth, address, and bank account details.

Never give this information out to a random stranger who called you. If you submitted a tax return last year the ATO already has your details. If not, you should be the one contacting them (they won’t contact you) – get their phone number from the ATO web site.

The same goes for emails. The ATO or other government agencies will not send emails to you asking for your bank account details.

He tells people that their PC is infected with malware, and gives them instructions on how to fix it. What really happens is that his instructions actually installs malware on the PC so that he can log into their computer and steal passwords.

And then to make things even worse, the caller asks for a payment for this service, asking for credit card details.

This person has also been impersonating other IT companies, not just Microsoft. This type of scam has been around for a while in other countries.

If you receive an unsolicited call from a random stranger claiming to help you with a problem you didn’t know you had, challenge them, insist they’re wrong, and basically ignore their advice. If there was a real problem on your PC you should be the one initiating a phone call, not the other way around.

If you feel you’ve been victimised by this, or have information to share, you can call the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission, details here.