Protect Yourself From Computer Fraud

Time was the major threat to computer users was from viruses which could attack or disable your pc. Today the main threat is from worm viruses or spyware attacks aimed at hitting your wallet. This month article deals with some basic tips to protect yourself from such attacks.

Tip 1 – Selling or Disposing Of A Used Computer
Selling or recycling your computer has the potential to be an extremely dangerous situation in terms of computer fraud and unless you follow the correct procedures you are handing potential criminals a plethora of information about yourself.
Don’t be fooled into believing that your nephew can erase your information for you. He can’t and with the right tools a potential criminal has a 90% chance of recovering enough information about you to cause you serious problems. I’ve recovered up to 75% of the information from broken drives for customers in the past and this is without using advanced repair and forensics. Be under no illusion when it comes to data recovery your information can be recovered and used against you. The same tools used by police forces worldwide to forensically analyze computers are available to the everyday criminal and they will use them against you.

Bottom line : Never, ever sell, transfer or donate your computer with the hard disk installed. The drive should be removed and kept by you or destroyed (Destruction of hard drives is not a do-it-yourself job and you have the potential for fairly serious injury to yourself if you take a hammer to your drive).
If you are selling the machine a new disk should be installed and the operating system and programs re-installed from scratch. The original disk should be kept by you.

Tip 2. Online Buying
Avoid using your credit or laser card like the plague when buying on the internet. Quite apart from the potential to be scammed directly by a fake website you also risk leaving enough information in on the machine for a virus attack to get the details. Information stealing viruses are at epidemic levels on the internet and you won’t even suspect you are infected until it is too late. I know of one case where the customer came across their own details for sale on a hacker’s website. This included their full name, address, and credit card number.

Tip: Use paypal to pay for your online purchases and if the site does not accept paypal get yourself a 3v card at www.3v.com This will limit your exposure to fraud.

Be careful out there they are waiting in the bushes for you!