As technology progresses, the amount of personal information we send electronically increases. We have become routinely comfortable with this under the impression that having a password on our network will keep prying eyes locked out. However, one would be shocked at the ease of which hackers can gain access to this data if your network has not been properly secured. Having extensive experience in wireless penetration testing I can let you in on a few facts that may come as a surprise.
One of the most common problems facing computer users today is malware.
What is malware? How can you protect your machine from getting malware? Read below to find out.
What is malware?
Malware, also referred to as a computer ‘virus’, is malicious software designed to gain access to computers to and user information without consent. Most malware we see nowadays is designed to gain profit from its victims.
When I’m looking at a search engine, I rarely just use it to find a website or person whom happens to just be on the internet. I have a habit of chewing up all resources piece by piece. So without further ado, I give you: How to properly use Google…
Child internet safety is always important, so here is a tool from Google that helps make the internet a safer place!
Google’s tool to help parents keep their kids safe online, SafeSearch, enables users to lock the strict filtering settings in place. When you activate the lock feature, SafeSearch cannot be turned off without entering a password.
As free public Wi-Fi becomes more and more widespread, so do the risks involved. Starbucks announced today that they will begin to offer free Wi-Fi at every location. This is a great convenience but it also prompts us here at Make It Work to warn you about potential risks and how to make yourself safe at these locations.
Though most of these public places will have firewalls to protect you from the outside, they still may not protect you from other folks within the same network. Many of the wireless hotspots that you may visit will be completely unencrypted, making them easy to connect to, but what is easy for you, is cakewalk for someone poised to take advantage of an unprotected public network. So here are a couple of tips and settings you should be aware of before you use a public hotspot.
The first thing one should do is turn sharing off. When at home or the office you may share files, printers, or even allow remote login from other computers on your safe home or work network. However, when on a public network you definitely need to turn all sharing off, because anyone can access your computer if you keep these settings on. So here is how to turn them off -
PC Users: Open your Control Panel, then navigate to Network and Internet > Network and Sharing Center, then click Choose Homegroup and Sharing Options > Change Advanced Sharing Settings. Once there, you will want to turn off file and printer sharing, network discovery and Public folder sharing.
Mac Users: Go to System Preferences > Sharing and uncheck all the boxes. You will then want to turn off network discovery, which will be in the same spot. This will prevent others from seeing your machine on the network, making you less likely to be targeted.
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