ARE YOU SAFE ON THE INTERNET

Internet security experts are warning that the amount of personal information being published via sites like facebook makes the internet a 'gold diggers' paradise. Please be wise about putting personal details on the internet.
Ira Winkler states:
"He said, "Social networking is a treasure trove. Every aspect of your life, interests, family and employer are available. People leave traces showing their vulnerabilities."

Winkler warned that it is coworkers and friends, people must be wary of.

Winkler said, "People are placing sensitive information all over the Internet. Coworkers and best friends could be the people who screw you the most.

"If you know the hardware and software of the system then you know how to hack that system."

However, Winkler added that developing relationships with strangers on social networking sites like Facebook increases the risk.

He said that it is easier for spies to monitor user movements with the help of social networking sites , including LinkedIn."

http://security.cbronline.com/news/facebook-is-gold-book-for-criminals-says-security-expert-at-rsa-conference-121011

10 years go all viruses were spread by e mail. Today the threat is very different. If you only have anti virus you are massively exposed. The main threat comes from malicious software on hacked websites. Every website should be considered a threat - even government sites have and are being hacked. The only way to be safe is to have something that checks every link on a site for validity.

Virus Bulletin reviews the new AVG 2012 "The combination of a wide range of features - including some nice innovations - with much improved design and usability, stability, unexceptionable system impact and highly impressive detection, seems like a winning one, and I expect to see AVG continuing to go from strength to strength with this release. "
- Virus Bulletin, March

AVG Antivirus Free Edition

Verdict: A great update to an already-popular package. If you want a free antivirus product, AVG Antivirus Free is the one to download.

AVG Antivirus Free incorporates a new LinkScanner feature and sees a major revision of the user interface.

The new UI is something of a relief; in the six years the software has been available, we've repeatedly criticised its front-end for its confusing multiple windows and garish designs.

Now all that is gone, replaced by the clean, blue design that debuted last month in the commercial AVG Internet Security

As with its paid-for cousin, all the program's modules can be accessed from one central console. You get the same antivirus and antispyware components as found in the full security suite, making AVG Free a competent, if not quite award-winning, virus detector.

Naturally, the free version doesn't have all the commercial product's features. You don't get any sort of firewall, nor the anti-spam module, though, as with the previous free edition, the package does integrate with your email client to stop mail-based attacks.

It also includes the new LinkScanner feature, which the company acquired last year when it bought out Exploit Prevention Labs. This browser plug-in integrates with three major internet search engines (Google, Yahoo! and MSN), automatically scanning the pages that are returned as search results and highlighting potentially dangerous links before you click on them.

However, keen not to cannibalise sales of its commercial product, AVG has warned that users should still surf cautiously, as the free package does not include the sandboxing feature that tests out unknown code in a secure environment.

The free version also comes with no entitlement to technical support, and - in the package's only conspicuous piece of pushiness - the optional web toolbar includes a Yahoo! search box which can't be hidden and a greyed out "Active Surf-Shield" button that tries to upsell you to the full commercial package.

But it's easy to forgive a few limitations and foibles in a free download. AVG Antivirus Free is less intrusive than its free competitor Avira Antivirus and certainly more usable than its previous incarnation. And in LinkScanner it offers a genuinely valuable new feature.

If you're serious about security, it's worth investing in something more comprehensive, but if all you want is a free, lightweight malware shield, we have no hesitation in recommending AVG.

An exploit is a piece of malware - in this case a rootkit - that takes advantage of a newly-announced or otherwise unpatched vulnerability. These vulnerabilities are most often found in operating systems, browsers, and other applications that routinely connect to the web, like media players and PDF readers.
Exploits can be hidden on any kind of web page - recent victims include Alicia Keys' MySpace page and the Major League Baseball (MLB.com) site. They are usually delivered as a drive-by download which - as its name implies - happens invisibly, without your knowledge.

According to Google, 1 in 1000 Web pages is delivering some kind of malicious code, mainly in the form of exploits delivered by drive-by downloads. That translates to something like 70,000 poisoned pages ready and waiting to infect visitors on any given day.

Google also found that antivirus programs could not detect all of these threats. The best of them detected only 70% of the drive-by downloads. And in the case of the exploit shown in our latest video, users are actually blocked from contacting or downloading updates from antivirus companies.