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Tips For Avoiding Social Networking Disasters

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If you are a business owner thinking about engaging in social networking as a tool for your business, take the time to read the following article from the North American Press Syndicate. 

Tips For Avoiding Social Networking Disasters

North American Press Syndicate

“Small businesses need effective, low-cost marketing strategies, and tools like Facebook and Twitter deliver megahits for microbudgets. Yet while many business owners are being advised to engage customers via social media, not all are informed of the risks.

Social network sites are fertile waters for Internet pirates who troll for unsuspecting victims, hoping to steal data by planting malware in the form of computer viruses, worms, Trojan horses and spyware.

If you are a small-business owner, work for one or hope to become one, these tips can help keep your business data secure:”

 

Avoid Social Networking Disasters

How Can You Find Out If Someone Is Hacking Your Computer?

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Computer-Hacker

 

Here is an interesting article about what signs to look for to determine whether you may be infected with viruses/malware that allow a hacker to take control of your PC.

 

 

 

How Can You Find Out If Someone Is Hacking Your Computer?

by Gaurav Srivastava

Many of you become innocent victims of hackers who break in your computers and steal all they can from the credit card details, bank information, emails, passwords, to professional documents among other critical things. You cannot really avoid hackers, their viruses and malware software when you are online but yes you can certainly avoid being a victim. This free virus removal support guide discusses how you can find out if someone is hacking your computer.

Step 1

When you reboot your computer, it reboots twice instead of once. It happens because the hacker has to boot his server in order to keep accessing your Windows or Mac computer. Thus, your computer quickly reboots after you reboot it and the startup screen appears twice. Another symptom of being hacked or virus-infected is when your computer reboots or shuts down on its own time and again. It means it doesn’t seek for your mouse or keyboard prompts to be shut down or restarted. When you attempt to access a program on your computer, you are not able to do it. You cannot access Task Manager, the Start menu or anything on your computer.

Step 2

When you open your web browser, some other website loads up but not your regular home page. When you search for something in your search engine, you are being redirected to websites that you have never browsed or even heard of. These can be adult or malicious websites prompting you to download adult materials or fake virus removal tools. If your web browser has a new toolbar, add-in, or plug-in that you did not install, it indicates that your browser and computer has been hacked. You do not see your usually plug-ins, add-ins, or toolbars when the browser is hacked. Besides, if your internet speed is really slow, it indicates your computer has a virus.

Step 3

If your CD- or DVD-ROM drive opens up without your action. Your computer has missing icons like Network Places, antivirus, or Outlook etc. However, you see new programs like virus removal tool (that you didn’t even download), music file etc. showing up on your desktop. If you see that your computer clock shows a different date & time, time zone settings, and daylight savings etc. (unless you have changed them), it has a stubborn, dangerous malware.

Step 4

If you have a firewall program like ZoneAlarm installed on your computer, it can tell you if someone has tried hacking it. Open ZoneAlarm or the firewall program you have and check if it has logged any malicious program entry that was attempting a server setup on your computer. If your firewall or antivirus program takes forever to scan your computer, it indicates that it has been compromised. If your antivirus icon is missing from your computer and it does not even open once you have found it, it has a virus that has disabled it to prevent itself from being removed.

Step 5

If you run a virus scan from your antivirus software, it shows multiple infected files and programs that you never even downloaded to your computer. All of a sudden you have multiple files with weird names like mslove.exe, abcd1234.exe, or giaehi45.jpg etc. in your computer. all of a sudden your computer starts taking forever to open a small program like Run or Command Prompt etc. The CPU usage shows 100% (maximum) for a small process like explorer.exe.

Step 6

When your friends tell you about the new links or posts you have shared (that you have never actually shared) on your Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter profile. When your friends or relatives receive bogus emails containing adult or objectionable materials, link etc. from your email address. When your credit card or online banking does not accept your password despite that you have it correctly and have not changed it in the recent past.

The Author of this article is associated with V tech-squad Inc, V tech-squad Inc. is a cloud based technical support provider to consumers and small businesses. if you have any problem while performing the above steps and need technical assistance for online virus removal, You can reach V tech-squad online technical support at their Toll Free No +1-877-452-9201.

About V tech-squad Inc.

V tech-squad Inc. is a cloud based online technical support provider to consumers and small businesses. V tech-squad provides support to users for issues with their PCs, Mac’s, Tablets, Phones such as iPhone and Blackberry and devices such as MP3 players, Printers, Scanners, Fax, Wireless networking gear, Netflix, Roku boxes and TVs. With an obsessive focus on quality and building technical expertise, V tech-squad continues to maintain an issue resolution rate of more than 90%. V tech-squad’s credibility has been tested by more than 10,000 customers. Currently V tech-squad provides support services to consumers and small businesses in United States. For more information on V tech-squad, Inc. visit vtechsquad.com.

Article Source: EzineArticles.com

Great Security Myth: I Don’t Need Anti-Virus Protection because I Bought an Apple Mac!

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virus-detectedMelbourne, 28 May 2010 – AVG (AU/NZ) Pty Ltd warns that Apple Macs running the OS X operating system, or some flavour of Linux distribution, are not immune to viruses, malware and other forms of Internet-carried spambots, Trojans, hacking and phishing.

That’s right, Apple Macs running the OS X operating system, or some flavour of Linux distribution, are open to attack from cyber criminals.

Now of course hackers and spammers are not stupid and they know that Windows users represent the ‘low hanging fruit’ in terms of potential targets. The sheer weight of numbers that the Windows’ user base carries with it makes it the primary target for malware attacks – and it’s going to stay that way for the foreseeable future.

“But,” Lloyd Borrett, Marketing Manager, AVG (AU/NZ), says: “The web changes everything. More specifically, web services, social media and online applications change everything.

“Suddenly you are operating one step further away from your Mac’s desktop and you are at the mercy of live real-time contact from third parties and the World Wide Web in general. This levels the playing field in some senses, so that suddenly your Mac is not a Mac for a moment – instead it’s just a computer.”

With the growing popularity of web services from Twitter and Facebook and so on, the opportunity to spread malware hidden in a simple link has, arguably, never been greater.

So Mac’s do have vulnerabilities and people should be increasingly aware of browser security concerns. Without identifying specific security holes in Safari or Opera (or Firefox for that matter), the operating system is no longer the primary target for Internet-driven user attacks by cyber criminals. The target is the application itself and the user’s behaviour within it.

Apple’s popularity is growing all the time even if its market share is still somewhere around less than 10 percent globally. Just this year security researchers found eight fresh zero-day vulnerabilities in Apple’s Safari browser.

“What matters most is that viral attacks are constantly evolving and looking for fresh blood,” Borrett continued. “So, everyone needs to think about Internet security protection. It’s as simple as that.”

Technical Facts

Looking objectively at the Mac operating system and tools, there is arguably a larger total surface area of code open to potential attack.

Combining rich use of Flash and Java with support for multiple file formats does not exactly put up extra barriers. Digging deeper, Address Space Layout Randomisation (ASLR) has been around since Windows Vista as an anti-exploitation technology, yet it is only present in Mac OS X 10.5 in some library offsets and therefore does not offer complete protection in the way that the technology was designed.

Conclusion: Apple Mac, Windows or Linux, the fact is that regardless of the operating system each of us is using, we’re all in this together. Everyone needs to be aware of what they are clicking on and use their commonsense – if something doesn’t look quite right, it probably isn’t!

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