Category: Malicious Software

Online Paid Surveys Can Be Questionable

There are huge numbers of people who would love to work from home, working when they choose.

And there are endless adverts on the Internet for these jobs, but sadly 59 out of every 60 such adverts are scams.

However, there are some real work at home jobs and filling in online surveys is one of them. Lots of sites offer these surveys and you get paid for filling them in.

Many of them have a poor reputation – tedious questions, not paying up, survey freezing near the end so you don’t get paid etc.

One such site that used to have a good reputation is the Australian group My Opinions at https://www.myopinions.com.au/ This is a well organised setup with lots of surveys and people have been paid and done well out of filling in the surveys.

Recently the website was taken over by a new company and some people feel the quality has dropped.

https://www.surveypolice.com/ is nothing to do with the Police – it’s just a website about surveys and people have added their views of myopinions.com.au and there is a lot of bad feeling about the company now.

It seems that some people have a good experience and are paid appropriately but others find that surveys free3ze at the end so they don’t count and some have been evicted from the survey site without reason and their payments not made.

Be careful if you start online surveys for money – make sure to pick a reputable company that always pays.

Do leave a comment on this post – click on the post title then scroll down to leave your comment.

Malvertising – The Bad Advertising

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Malvertising (the word is a contraction of “malicious advertising”) and means to use online advertising to spread malware which is computer viruses and programmes that take over your PC or steal identity information etc.

Malvertising is carried out by inserting malicious adverts into legitimate advertising networks and the ads can end up on highly reputable websites.  Malvertising is “attractive to attackers because they ‘can be easily spread across a large number of legitimate websites.

Malvertising is hard to combat because it can work its way into a webpage and spread through a system unknowingly:  It is able to expose millions of users to malware, even the most cautious, and is growing rapidly:

In 2012, it was estimated nearly 10 billion ad impressions were compromised by malvertising and things are not really getting much better.

Malvertising often involves the exploitation of trustworthy companies. Those attempting to spread malware place “clean” advertisements on trustworthy sites first in order to gain a good reputation, then they later insert a virus or spyware in the code behind the ad, and after a mass virus infection is produced, they remove the virus, thus infecting all visitors of the site during that time period. The identities of those responsible are often hard to trace, making it hard to prevent the attacks or stop them altogether, because the ad network infrastructure is very complex with many linked connections between ads and click-through destinations.

In 2015, there were Malvertising attacks against, eBay, answers.com, talktalk.co.uk and many others. It involved breaches of ad networks, including DoubleClick. Even the New York Times and the London Stock Exchange were affected.

This is difficult for the end user to combat as it depends very much on the security at the advertising networks.

Don’t automatically trust adverts on respected websites as they may not realise what’s being advertised.

 

Can Someone Ransom Your Computer Files?

Ransom NoteYes they can. A malicious piece of software called ransomware can be unintentionally installed on your computer and hold you to ransom for access to your own files.

You may have clicked on a seemingly innocent email or website and the ransomware has downloaded to your computer. Then a screen appears with a message such as

“All of the files on this computer have been encrypted. You have 24 hours to submit payment to receive the encryption key, otherwise your files will be permanently destroyed.”

You can choose to pay, in the hope of getting access to your files but there is no guarantee. You can choose to ignore the threat or you can go to an IT expert for assessment.  Sometimes the message on screen is more threatening, such as

It may display what looks like an FBI page warning that you have committed an illegal act and must pay a fine or it may appear to a UK Police Force or some other authority. It is all fake of course as the FBI and other authorities do not practice blackmail.

To protect your computers against ransomware, make sure you have up to date anti-virus installed, take regular backups of all important documents and consider installing anti malware software.

Across the globe in 2014, there were 8.8 million ransomware attacks reported and this crime is rising rapidly.

For more information go to Ransomware: What is it?

Ransomware: What is It?

Ransom Note

Imagine you’ve been working hard to create a new presentation for work or an official document or a personal photograph album. When you finally finish the work, a message appears on screen that says

“All of the files on this computer have been encrypted. You have 24 hours to submit payment to receive the encryption key, otherwise your files will be permanently destroyed.”

You’ve been hit with Ransomware.

This could be lies – it could just be an empty threat, but it could also be very real and if you don’t pay then your files may be lost permanently.

What do you do?

Step 1: disconnect from the Internet immediately.

Step 2 : Make a choice on whether to pay

If you pay, then maybe you get your files back and maybe not.

If you choose not to pay then switch the computer off and get it to an expert ASAP.

Across the globe in 2014, there were 8.8 million ransomware attacks reported and this crime is rising rapidly.

For further information refer to article  Fightback Online Ransomware