Malware and Organized Crime.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Malware proliferation.

 

I hope our members are all well protected.  One of the best protections, if you must be on the Internet at all, is to not have a smart phone, and another is to stay off the social networks.  And, of course, don't use the main target of malware -- Windows.

 

The worst of it is all these "immortal, immune" teen-agers running around on the net.

[Ocram's Razr 964]

Smart phones are mostly unaffected by malware. Android phones can be carriers that can infect computers they plug into while iOS is completely immune.

--Ocram

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Give it a while.  The existence of smart phones is an attractant to hackers.

[hym 358]

Smart phones are mostly unaffected by malware. Android phones can be carriers that can infect computers they plug into while iOS is completely immune.

--Ocram

That isn't true. Apple products are just as vulnerable any other product. (In fact, iOS has security flaws that even Microsoft had enough sense to correct.) Hackers even demonstrated that is isn't necessary for a machine to ever connect to another device to be infected. Dell learned that the hard way when their manufacturing equipment got hacked into making infected parts.

[Duke87 1,070]

The concept of Whitelisting is why I use NoScript. It's a lovely thing.

 

With regards to smartphones, the primary threat seems to be from rogue apps. There have been tons of fake Netflix apps that steal your info. If you're like me and are not in the habit of installing lots of apps, your phone is probably no more at risk than your PC. The problem is a lot of people are in the mindset of wanting an app for everything and when you go and download tons of programs of course you start to run a high risk that one of them is somehow malicious. In this regard iPhones are probably somewhat safer because Apple keeps a tighter watch on their app store than Google does - the downside, of course, is that on an iPhone you can only install apps that Apple approves of (disapproval need not be for security reasons) unless you jailbreak the phone, whereas on Android you can install any app you want.

 

As for social networks, learn to recognize scams. Anything instructing you to paste some text beginning with "javascript" in your URL bar is likely malicious.

 

And of course, if you receive an email about your account somewhere, don't click on links in it. Navigate to the website manually or via a bookmark. If something requires addressing you will be able to do so that way. Also, beware of entering personal info in pages that do not use secure HTTP (the URL should begin "https://"), and if you're unsure, check that the domain matches (e.g. "ebay.org" is not "ebay.com").

 

The growth of cyber crime rings in Eastern Europe is very telling of the global nature of the internet: it allows criminals to hide in countries with lax law enforcement, but still attack victims anywhere in the world. The US government is pretty effective at shutting down illegal operations located in the US, but they are powerless against any such operations located overseas.

Because of this, cyber crime poses far more of a threat to someone located in a western country than physical crime does.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Smart phones becoming increasingly targeted.

 

The party is over.  Only a truly naive person would happily spread himself over the net.  Seems there are lots of those.