Is Your Company Suffering from the Ill Effects of These New Threats?

Which do you think will contain malware: an adult website, or one that talks about religion? Most of us would assume it would be the adult website, but most of us would be wrong. Symantec conducted a recent study that indicated that many hackers and digital attackers have evolved. They have wandered away from adult websites and have gone mainstream with their efforts because of the amount of attention the adult industry has gotten over the past few years. What this means for the rest of us is that none of our website browsing is safe. It doesn’t matter if we have a Mac or a PC, or if we’re a small business or just a casual Internet browser at home.

Here are two things you can avoid to help ramp up your efforts against these new, malicious digital threats.

Don’t trust unknown apps on social media websites. There are thousands of applications on Facebook, and most of them are perfectly harmless. However, some are designed to grab information from you and trick you into giving them more. There are several popular question applications that usually have innocent questions, but sometimes they have a question that will ask for personal information, and that information is used against you. There are also several applications that, when installed, will send spam messages to all of your friends through Facebook. Beware of apps with low ratings, no ratings, or ones that none of your friends are using.

Beware phishing attempts that arrive to your inbox. Some phishing attempts have gotten quite convincing and elaborate these past few years, and sometimes it’s hard to tell a real from a fake. The email will come from an official looking account, and will indicate that there is official business going on at a particular website you use (Facebook, Twitter, or even bank websites). They indicate that you need to click on a link and enter your information. When you do, it’s stolen, and so is your privacy. Don’t click on anything or call any phone number from any email that has bad grammar, improper punctuation or asks for a password.