How Do You Prevent Unauthorised Access to your Computer?
As the maintenance and technical advisor Ask Yogi at “PC One Stop Shop“. customers always ask me how do you prevent unauthorised access to your computer? There is no short answer to this question so I thought I’d address a number of the more common issues related to this topic.
Firewall Programs
A simple, yet very important application for online security is a firewall program. Imagine that your computer is a house. It has an address. It also has many windows, over 65,000 in fact.
Some of these windows are opened when certain programs connect to the internet. Email, internet explorer, bit torrent, all use pre arranged windows called “ports”.
The problem is that some of these windows can be opened without your permission, and unless you are keeping a close eye on them, you would be unaware of a intruder climbing through.
So, why not hire a caretaker to check them for you? Basically that’s what a firewall does, it checks that all your windows are closed and asks you if such a program is allowed to enter or leave the building.
It is a lot more complicated of course, but it’s made easy by software that does the job for you. There are many brands and versions of firewall software; perhaps the best and most popular one to get you started is Norton Internet Security 2009.
Email Scams
If someone knocked on your door and offered you £100,000 to look after a briefcase with £4 million, wouldn’t you be a little suspicious? Of course you would, it just wouldn’t happen, so why should email make it any different?
Ask Yogi from www.pconestopshop.com advise that emails from foreign countries, Kings asking for assistance in moving large sums of money, are all just elaborate hoaxes designed to take money off unsuspecting people.
The same with emails from banks asking to confirm your account details, or Paypal asking to login and check your details, both providing a nice link to save you the trouble of going the normal way of typing in the website yourself.
Ask Yogi from www.pconestopshop.com seriously recommends that if you are in doubt, contact by telephone, or login through another browser page, just don’t use the link provided.
Passwords
Ask Yogi from “PC One Stop Shop” offers the following example. Every house in your street needs a key to open the door. If every key was the same, there would be no point in having locks. When shopping online, logging into email, online banking etc , its good practise to use a different password for each site. Password selection can be an issue itself. For example, using “password” is likely the first thing I would guess if trying to access your account ( and recent studies show that over 30% of people who are not familiar with computers actually use this, I am being absolutely serious. )
The best type of password is a combination of letters and numbers with mixed upper and lower case. If you check online for password strength, there are a number of utilities which can “test” your password strength. Check yours now, you will surprised at the results.
Keep your programs up to date
From time to time, holes are found in programs software that can allow unauthorised access into the computer that they are running on. Microsoft Windows operating systems being a prime example, have updates regularly released which patch these holes. It is a constant process, as new exploits are found all the time.
Referring back to the firewall program, these usually come with an anti-virus package. As new virus programs are found, updates are released that instruct your software how to protect against these new threats. All the firewall, anti-virus and spy-ware software in the world wont help if they don’t know how to defend against the latest exploit, virus or mal-ware that are doing the rounds. Keep everything as up to date as possible, and it will help to keep your system secure against these threats. You can purchase your anti virus and spy-ware software from the UK’s largest PC & IT e-tailer
Keep a low profile
Ask Yogi from PC One Stop Shop suggests keeping a low profile is really just common sense. You wouldn’t give your credit card details to the first person who asked for them. Check that there is a proper reason for giving personal details out to websites, they may be legitimate, but they may of course just want your email address for spam email abuse. Most websites, for example Tesco or Asda, follow strict data protection policies, which include not giving your details to other third parties unless your permission is given.
If you receive an email from an unknown company asking for your details, offering free entry into a prize draw for thousands of pounds, what are the chances of winning? More likely it’s a ruse to harvest personal data for use in identity or credit card fraud. If it seems too good to be true, then it usually is!
These are some of the more common points in internet security that lots people overlook; I hope that by reading this article, you are a little more aware of how people get caught up in fraud and identity theft etc.
Stay alert, and you’ll be fine
Hope this helps.
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