Web Security Tips

Online auctions offer just about every product imaginable. Although there are legitimate sellers, there is a danger that products may be misrepresented or not delivered. The Internet Crime Complaint Center shares the tell-tale signs of potential online auction fraud to Internet users.

Beware of a seller posing as a United States resident who then sends an email saying that he is overseas or asks for money under a different name. The fund requests are usually through Western Union, MoneyGram or wire transfers, and therefore cannot be recovered.

On the seller side, be wary of buyers who request for shipping to another country through ways that avoid customs or duties, and for credit card purchases where the cardholder’s address is not the shipping address. The authorization of the cardholder should always be obtained first.

If you find yourself victimized or targeted by Internet criminals, there are different ways to take action depending on the country and state laws. There are many avenues for airing complaints. One such organization is the Internet Crime Complaint Center, a partnership between the FBI and the National White Collar Crime Center. There are many forms of cyber crime including the violation of Intellectual Property Rights, Hacking, Espionage, Extortion, International Money Laundering, and Identity Theft. The IC3 provides the reporting mechanism and refers the complaints to the appropriate law enforcement agencies for investigation. It maintains ties with regulatory bodies to stay vigilant about new forms of cyber crime and keep a proactive stance in fighting it.

The IC3 does not conduct investigations itself. As such, other agencies may open investigations when necessary. Remember to keep all the original documentary evidence with you. These can include checks, invoices and receipts, chat or email printouts, and webpage printouts or electronic copies. In case of urgent complaints or threats sent online, alert your local or state police, as it is not assured that time-sensitive information can be responded to immediately. Terrorist information should be sent to the FBI, which can be contacted online through its online tipping system. For spam emails, copy and paste the entire email, including the header to the IC3.

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Victims of Internet fraud should approach the authorities and file a complaint immediately. A third party may also file a complaint. In either case, it is important to give as much detail as possible and to give all the documentary evidence. Internet crime refers to any illegal activity on the Internet, including email and chat. For crimes in which at least one of the two parties (fraudster and defrauded) is in the United States, the complaint can be made with ic3.gov. After submitting the complaint online, you will receive an ID and password for your case so that you can add information. Once received by the IC3, complaints cannot be canceled.

The internet has again suffered a hiccup when the untimely death of “The King of Pop”, sent millions to file query’s on the web’s most trusted source for quick searches, Google News. The problem, the system treated the mass query as a DoS attack and barred itself shut, denying the hungry for news of their much loved singer who was suddenly taken from this earth. Google admits the hiccup left people without a properly functioning news service for about an hour while their people tried to address the issue which was indeed legitimate and was supposedly not to be any cause for alarm. Read more »

Still considered to be the largest security threat the world over, human nature defies explanation even with terabyte calculations to predict what people would do and how they would react to stimuli. The internet has suffered a lot mainly due to human error, failure of equipment that was already way past their prime, cables dug up by construction people who weren’t reading the right plans and so on and so forth. many of the internet’s problems has it’s basis on human error, the mistake by a Symantec personnel to release a security testing file without proper security signatures and more. Read more »

The US Government has finally toughened it’s stance and taken the advise of some security experts on how to bets address cyber-security to bolster their ability to deal with the rising threat from the internet that has been plaguing the many government servers and computers deployed all over the globe. They hired a black-hat, Jeff Moss aka the hacker “dark tangent” was hired as an adviser by the government to help with their cyber-security measures so they become more realistic. The government has previously relied upon commercial software for most non-critical network protection that has failed a lot due to high sophistication in attacks, there these low security networks are often used as entry point to more critical networks. Read more »

The internet has changed the lives of all people on earth, getting news out faster than traditional media, reaching out to for social functions and many more. It has also become the battle ground between the people who aim to gain information and those who own them, with the people who protect us from such attacks in the middle. Information is the new standard by which a malicious attack is gauged, or better yet how much information was lost, leached or even leached out of your fingertips even with proper and respectable security software installed. Read more »

Flash drives are the new (and more buffed up) versions of the floppy disks of old. Unfortunately, portable drives are also one of the major contributors to the transfer or viruses, malware, worms, trojans, and all sorts of unpleasant elements from system to system.

Especially when you’re away from your system (which, we’re assuming has adequate virus protection) the next best thing is to utilize online scanners to scan your flash and portable drives.

The good thing about online scanning platforms is that all you need is an internet connection. Virus definitions are also automatically updated by the sites administrators, so you need not worry whether the virus definitions are up to date. The downside is that for slow internet connections, scanning will also take longer, so if you have an 8gb flash drive, for example, it’ll take some time to clean on a slow internet connection.

Conspiracy theorists love the coming of such events, where they predict the end of the world. Or at least the internet as we know it, for the much studied conficker worm is again set to awaken this April Fools which is a couple of months away yet people are beginning to talk about the possible effects of the said internet worm. From malware to panic-ware, conficker has always been in the sights of the many web security experts who are after the makers of one of the longest running worms in the history of the internet (and of course the $250,000 reward Microsoft is offering for anybody who can point the finger at the people who are responsible for the release of the darned thing has nothing to do with it). They know the worm inside out due to reverse engineering but the most intriguing thing about this one is that there is no name or identifying mark on the code which normal hackers always do. They know the code or the revisions come from Korea but that’s it, no trace, no identifying marks to follow.