New Dangers And Bad News

You may already have heard of ransomware, the newest trick of the bad guys to get at your money.

If you have not here is a VERY SHORT explanation: A ransomware virus encrypts all your data files, that is in effect makes them unusable and unreadable. After the encryption is done you have to pay money to the crooks do get instructions and a "decryption key"; if the instructions and the decryption key work correctly as they should you get your data back but sometimes it does not work. Your data is held for ransom, hence the name.

So far the highest amount reportedly paid by a large California based medical organization was 17 million dollars.

Very recently the web sites of a whole lot of well known and big organizations got abused to show advertisements infected with ransomware. Some of the affected web sites were:

• msn.com
• nytimes.com
• aol.com
• nfl.com
• theweathernetwork.com
• thehill.com
• zerohedge.com 

and many more. These sites have millions of daily visitors! If you are interested you can read more details here.

I can not say it often and loud enough:

If you see advertisements on the Internet your web browser and thus your computer are NOT SAFE at all! Fire your current technician and call me or send me an email!

When I leave a customer's house they ALL have a safely set up web browser that should not show ANY of these commercially distributed advertisements.

Stay safe.

2015-09-10 WBKV Talking Points

Malvertising “explodes”
2013 saw a more than 200 percent increase over 2012 according to the Online Trust Alliance; they logged some 12.4 billion malvertisement impressions.
2014 saw a 300 percent increase in malvertising over 2013 (ca. 37 billion).
2015 it increased by more than 260 % over 2014, in the first six months alone (over 100 billion/year)
Estimated damages 2015 alone about $1bn!

That is why I say: If you see advertisements your computer is NOT SAFE!

Belkin routers NOT SAFE!
No details about what models; all I can recommend is: Buy another brand router (I prefer Netgear)

Many top level domains on the internet are dangerous!
More than 95 percent of the hundreds of thousands websites in each of ten top level domains (TLDs) including .country, cricket, .science, .review, .zip and .party are flogging spam, malware, or adware.
Stay away!
Here are names of TLDs and percentage of infectuous sites:

1	.zip	100.00%
2	.review	100.00%
3	.country	99.97%
4	.kim	99.74%
5	.cricket	99.57%
6	.science	99.35%
7	.work	98.20%
8	.party	98.07%
9	.gq	97.68%	(Equatorial Guinea)
10	.link	96.98%

.

Parents need to wake up!
Of 1,494 apps and websites for children 67% collect children’s personal information;
half of these share personal information with third parties.
22% gather children's phone number and 23% allowed them to provide photos or video.

Don't buy Seagate wireless disk drives; they are not safe! (Secret hard-coded login!)