CompuClever Blog

Safeguard Your Online Banking

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Over the last few years Internet fraud has increased and is becoming a serious issue for online transactions. Using a variety of methods, online thieves can easily access important information like bank accounts and personal data. This article helps you to understand essential techniques hackers deploy to break into your bank account and how to nullify these hacking attempts by using tools that may already be available with your antivirus application.

How hackers infiltrate your bank account

To infiltrate your bank account hackers need exactly the same set of complete credentials you would supply to your online banking site. It is extremely rare, although not impossible, that a hacker would directly contact someone who would then voluntarily give away her bank account number, login name, and password over the phone or email. But it is very common that a compromised PC infested with malware can provide hackers with the necessary recorded keystrokes, mouse clicks, and even screenshots. By mimicking the procedures they’ve learned with the obtained credentials, hackers can digitally impersonate you and thus gain access to your bank accounts over the Internet with ease.

How to nullify online banking hacking attempts

You can defuse these attempts head-on by knowing the essential schemes used by hackers. Continue reading...

Are you well protected

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“Am I well protected by the antivirus product that I just chose?” This is the most common question that lingers in the mind of almost every security-cautious PC user when first installing an antivirus solution, whether it’s free or purchased. Almost every commercially available antivirus program today boasts that it will protect you from any and all malware.  However, the reality is no two security products are created equal and there are similarities and important differences among antivirus software when it comes to evaluating the level of sufficiency and effectiveness of protection. This article shows you what to look for and how to tell if your antivirus software provides you enough protection.

Known or Unknown

There two types of malware: Known and Unknown.

  • A Known virus is a piece of widespread and prevalent malware discovered in the past four weeks. Detection of known viruses is relatively trivial because for the past decade or so, the antivirus industry has evolved into a “coopetition” landscape (in other words, a coexistence of cooperation and competition), through which security researchers and solution providers proactively and voluntarily share discovery of new virus samples with absolutely secure measures.
  • An Unknown virus, better known as a zero-day attack, is a threat that exploits an unknown computer security vulnerability.
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Antivirus Solutions

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Too frequently PC users suffer the consequences of a virus or malware attack.  Once becoming a victim of an attack it seems the only choices available is to take it to a repair technician or try to re-install the entire operating system yourself.  With all these situations you could face loss of data and you definitely have to wait for your PC to be up and running.  Then there is the cost factor if you have to get someone to do it for you.  It’s no wonder that security tools such as antivirus (AV) products get a lot of attention.  But… as many of us can attest, there are programs that can take over your PC and slow down overall functioning as well as your own workflow when taking into account a constant barrage of popup messages.  We examine here AV solutions and focus on what we need and how we can avoid to some degree malicious attacks from occurring.

In a recent article we touched on the topic of safe PC practices – especially when installing bundled software packages or opening unknown attachments.  Considering many applications contain built-in security and many operating systems also have on-board security tools, what do we actually require from independent AV programs?  Continue reading...