Here & There Column 4-8-08

What Can We Do To Make The Internet Safer?


There are many of us today that depend heavily on our e-mail for both sending and receiving messages but a recent conversation with Internet and law enforcement officials strongly pointed out that criminals who seize control of tens of thousands of home and office computers through what are known as "botnets" are a growing threat to a vehicle we all feel is safe.
And the scary thing about this is that even hospitals and police authorities may be at risk from this new Internet threat.
Top law enforcement officials since early last year have arrested over 10 individuals who allegedly infected and commandeered somewhere around 1 million personal computers and turned them into robots.
Cyber crimes are growing even though authorities are making inroads and we as Internet consumers need to take preventive measurers to minimize the danger to our computers.
Internet police say that its important to keep technical precautions like anti virus programs, spy ware protection programs and firewall programs updated.
Computer users are being advised to think of the Internet as they would a dangerous neighborhood where their personal safety may be threatened.
Warnings are given that if you receive an e-mail communications from someone you don't expect to hear from, and it's got an unusual attachment, the advice to follow is don't open it.
We asked what a "Botnet" is and were informed that it is a robot network and allows a criminal to seize control of any number of computers by introducing malicious programs like spy ware, viruses, worms, or Trojan horses into each computer through its Internet connection. Then with a single command, the master of the computer network can have each of the slave computers contact a particular computer network, bringing it down because of the sheer demand on its ports. A move like this could cause a company to lose millions of dollars in business.
In addition, slave computers can be used to compromise still more computers for the "botnet" or to engage in fishing schemes inducing people to give up their personal information in response to phony e-mails supposedly sent by banks.
IInernet officials noted that one a computer is compromised, a criminal can retrieve any information from that computer and the sad fact is that the computer uses would have no indication that his or her computer has been compromised.
Here is some advice that all of us who use a computer should follow:
Install up-to-date spy ware and anti virus programs.......have a firewall in place that assessed the traffic going in and out of a computer.......choose passwords that have upper and lower case letters as well as numbers and using symbols in a password is also a good idea if allowed....passwords should be changed periodically....ideally different passwod should be used for each account.
Taking the right precautions will make our usage of the Internet safer.