Believe it or not, hackers have grown lazier. According to security experts, digital sony VGP-BPS9/B Battery miscreants and criminals no longer have to spend hours creating their attacks. They can just check off a few boxes to generate convincing phishing websites and malware that’s made to look like legitimate security software. Symantec alone receives roughly 20 million pieces of malware each month, up from 10 million in 2008. We sat down with Patrick Martin, senior manager at Symantec’s security response and Dmitri Alperovitch, vice president of threat research for McAfee, to get a handle on which threats to watch out for and how to protect your data.

Antivirus In Disguise
File this under “rotten scams that have gotten worse.” Researchers from Symantec and McAfee agree that “rogue AV,” or malware that pretends to be security software, has become more common. The scary thing is that you can Sony VGP-BPS9A/B Battery encounter a dialog box belonging to malicious so-called security software even while browsing a legitimate website. Once you download the malware (surrendering your credit card number in the process, of course), the thieves can not only use this information to extort more money, but sell other hackers access to your computer, install password-stealing trojans to extract more sensitive data, or use your PC as a bot that spams and infects other computers.
Fortunately, updated security software should keep you safe, but for added protection we recommend that if you see a pop-up from an unfamiliar security program, click the back button in your browser and get off that site as fast as possible. If the pop-up is a dialog box, just click the X to close it.
Martin says the problem will only continue getting worse so long as there are suckers out there falling for such scams. “It works: people click,” he said. “It’s just like marketers. People send junk mail because it works.” McAfee, for one, has a free cybercrime response unit, including an online scanner as well as access to agents sony VGP-BPS9 battery who can help resolve problems.

Antisocial Networks
In the 1980s people fell prey to a series of scams that became known as Nigerian bank fraud, in which con men from this African country sent letters to Americans, posing as exiled princes in need of a loan. Since the Internet has become ubiquitous, these scammers have turned to e-mail, either sony VGP-BPS9/S battery asking for sensitive information, such as bank account numbers, or leading people to fraudulent websites that pretend to be bank portals.

Recently, though, ploys like these have grown more convincing. By hacking into someone’s Facebook or Twitter account, a hacker can send messages to that user’s friends, pretending to be the owner of the account. Symantec’s Martin Dell GD761 Battery and McAfee’s Alperovitch have each seen plenty of instances in which thieves pretend that the owner of the account has found him or herself in a foreign country, robbed or otherwise bereft of money.

Other hackers embed their messages with links to phishing sites. Alperovitch warns that once a hacker has gained access to your friend’s profile, he has a dangerous amount of information about both his victim and you. “If you have a Facebook page that’s talking about your personal life,” he said. “Your friends—all PA3534U-1BRS that information can be accessed by fraudsters and used to craft a phishing message that’s targeted specifically at you.”
Regardless of what form the attack takes, the consensus is that on social networks, people let their guard down around virtual friends. “The level of awareness, the inhibitions someone might have in saying, ‘I don’t know if that’s safe to do’ is sometimes lower,” said Martin

How Much Would You Pay For A Streaming-Only Netflix Account?

Canadian Nextflix subscribers had something to celebrate this week as the company Vostro 1710 Battery launched a Streaming Only subscription option for just $7.99/month. With this users get no DVDs in the mail but access to all the on demand content they can watch. Currently there’s no equivalent subscription offer here in the U. S. — for $8.99 you can stream all you want and get 1 DVD a month — but Netflix is apparently considering it, according to this blog post.

I spend far more time watching on demand content good battery from Netflix then maintaining my DVD queue these days, so I could definitely go for this. The price for streaming plus 1 DVD is already less than Hulu Plus (and contains no commercials), so I suspect the price will fall into the realm of the Good Deal. However, my hope would be something along the lines of $4.99, not $7.99. We’ll see how it shakes out.

In the meantime, what would you pay for a Streaming Only option for Netflix? And under what conditions? The recent battery announcement of more content from NBC is definitely a good thing, but movie hounds don’t have as much to choose from as those of us who mainly use the service to watch TV shows