How safe is our data?

Spyware is being created for the purpose of recording others personal data such as passwords and credit card numbers, or hacking browser, or grabbing web dialer. There is a research showed that a total of 650,000 PCs were contained more than 18 millions spyware tools. A newest spyware threat is on e-greeting cards. It was designed to monitor the internet activity of the recipient, thereby sending an emailed record to the sender containing email activity, passwords used and so on. Let’s see how this e-greeting card spyware work. Initially, the recipient gets concentrate looking at a romantic email message with an attached or linked greeting card. The email appears to legitimate and show something such as “I love you”, “I miss you forever” and so on. When recipient clicked on the linked, the spyware is instantaneously and silently being installed into the computer. Once installed, spyware begins to monitor silently until can’t even be detected by the recipient’s antivirus software. It logs every website that is visited as well as every password entered and sends those records back to the sender of the greeting card. He could be your lover or criminal.

Hacker is someone involved in internet security that specializing in obtaining unauthorized access to systems through skills, tactics, or detailed knowledge. Hackers broke into the systems of an Ohio hospital and personal detailed of up to 230,000 patients or their family members, and even banking information on around 12,000 financial donors might have been compromised. Ohio was being attacked when the hospital was upgrading its systems. Besides, there was also a case occurred in University of California. Computer server was being hacked into which contained confidential information approximately 46,000 people. FBI team has been called to investigate this incident.

Phishing is a technique used to obtain personal information such as usernames, passwords and credit card details, by using fraudulent e-mail messages that appear to come from legitimate businesses. Paypal, eBay and online banks are usually become their targets. Phishing is typically carried out by email or instant message that directs users to enter personal details at a website. Let’s take an example, there were four eastern Europeans attended in a London court charged with defrauding online banks about hundreds of thousands via a ‘phishing’ scam. Scam emails that form the basis of phishing pose as ‘security check’ email from well known banks. These messages required users to handing their account details and passwords. There is a website launched to warn consumers about the risk of phishing attacks. (banksafeonline.org.uk)