Billions lost to online predators
More and more consumers have turned to online services to shop and pay your bills.
It might sound harmless, but unfortunately, the bad guys are getting smarter and smarter at stealing our personal information. A recent Consumer Reports survey found consumers lost 8.5 billion dollars to computer hacking during the last two years.
You probably would not even know that your computer is hacked into until it’s too late. The anti-virus software we all buy is not savvy enough to outsmart the sophisticated programs that are scamming us.
There are software companies, so to speak, that hire computer programmers to hack into computers and download fake virus software that you cannot get off of your computer. Even the most advanced computer technician can’t remove the multiple layers of data they automatically install. You simply have to buy a new computer and accept losing all of your data. More than 2 million computers were replaced due to these problems last year and this year.
That’s a tough pill to swallow with all of us using our computers as much as we do and trusting that the companies that we deal with are safe.
Joe Stewart is Director of Malware Research for SecureWorks in Myrtle Beach. He says, “The problem is you can’t really trust your own computer. Unless you’re an expert and know everything that’s running on your computer and everything that might be happening there, you really can’t trust it,” said Stewart. “So in some cases, if people are really adamant about doing banking online and things like that, we actually recommend that they keep an entirely separate computer just to do their financial banking and shopping on.“
Guidelines to follow:
-Make sure your anti-virus software is updated.
-Use different passwords to pay your bills and access accounts.
-Use a separate credit card dedicated to online purchases and bill paying. It may be a bit of a hassle, but worth preventing identity theft.
Stewart said it’s only going to get tougher as criminals figure out more ways to crack systems.
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