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When connecting to the Internet, your home computer (or network router) is assigned a public IP address. As you visit Web sites or other Internet servers, that public IP address is transmitted and recorded in log files kept on those servers. Access logs leave behind a trail of your Internet activity. If it were possible to somehow hide your public IP address, your Internet activity would become much more difficult to trace.

Unfortunately, it is not technically possible to always hide the public IP address of a home network. An IP address enables devices to locate and communicate with each other on the Internet. Completely hiding the IP address of a device would render it invisible but also unusable online.On the other hand, it is possible to hide public IP addreseses from most Internet servers in most situations. This method involves an Internet service called an anonymous proxy server.
This way, Web sites will see the proxy’s IP address, not your home IP address.

Using an anonymous proxy server requires a simple configuration of the Web browser (or other Internet client software that supports proxies). Proxies are identified by a combination of URL and TCP port number.

Numerous free anonymous proxy servers exist on the Internet, open for anyone to use. These servers may have bandwidth traffic limits, may suffer from reliability or speed problems, or might permanently disappear from the Internet without notice. Such servers are most useful for temporary or experimental purposes.

Anonymous proxy services that charge fees in return for better quality of service also exist. These services are designed for regular use by households.
Hiding Your IP Address – Related Tools
Several related software tools (both free and paid versions) support anonymizing proxies. The Firefox extension called “switchproxy,” for example, supports defining a pool of proxy servers in the Web browser and automatically switching between them at regular time intervals. In general, these tools help you both find proxies and also simplify the process of configuring and using them.

The ability to hide an IP address increases your privacy on the Internet. Other approaches to improving Internet privacy also exist and complement each other. Managing Web browser cookies, using encryption when sending personal information, running a firewall and other techniques all contribute toward a greater feeling of safety and security when going online.

Anonymous Proxy Servers

An anonymous proxy server (“proxy”) is a special type of server that acts as an intermediary between a home network and the rest of the Internet. An anonymous proxy server makes requests for Internet information on your behalf, using its own IP address instead of yours. Your computer only accesses Web sites indirectly, through the proxy server.

If you are worried that someone may be looking over your shoulder–in the virtual sense–as you browse the Web, you don’t have to be an online agoraphobe any longer: New tools from old hands in Web privacy will let you surf with complete anonymity.

A certain degree of paranoia about the Web is justified. Advertisers track Web surfers all the time, planting cookies that track you as you surf from site to site so they can see what you want and where you go.

Proxy servers, such as the CGIProxy, have been around for years. These sites open another site, say, Amazon.com, in a pane of the proxy. That way, Amazon won’t see your IP address and the proxy can block ads and some cookies.

But proxy sites still allow destination sites to implant some ad cookies and Web bugs–the two most common tracking devices–on your system. Worse, many proxies are just too slow.

New browser plug-ins block far more than just your IP address. Both Anonymizer.com’s Private Surfing ($30 per year, limited-feature free version) and Zero-Knowledge’s Freedom WebSecure ($50 per year) promise to make you invisible to everyone on the Internet. Each product will encrypt transmissions between your computer and Web sites, scramble URLs so that they can’t be seen by administrators, disable the tracking function of cookies (while still letting them save preferences or perform automatic log-in at Web sites that use cookies for those purposes), and block some–though not all–advertising banners and graphics.

The plug-ins work only with Internet Explorer versions 5 and higher. Anonymizer’s plug-in is compatible with versions of Windows from 98 through XP; a Zero-Knowledge spokesperson tells me that its tool can’t run on some installations of Windows 98 and Me, but that it works well with Windows 2000 or XP.

The two plug-ins behave similarly: After a short download, each service adds a small button to Internet Explorer’s toolbar that toggles the application on and off. Private Surfing and Freedom WebSecure both generate a toolbar at the top of your Web browser window. Once you log in with your user name and password, the software becomes active and you can surf anonymously to your heart’s content.

Related services from these companies in the past offered anonymous surfing, but at a snail’s pace. The new versions are dramatically faster. Freedom WebSecure seemed positively peppy, while Anonymizer still was a bit slower than unprotected surfing because of its encryption.

If you’re concerned about the bread-crumb trail you leave across the Internet as you browse the Web, either of these tools can sweep those crumbs away and keep profilers off your back.

End-users are still the main cause of virus infections in the workplace, as they continue to open suspicious email attachments and use online file-sharing and instant messenging services, according to experts.

The claim comes as the main antivirus software companies revealed that stubborn mass-mailing worm Klez, which carried an infected attachment, was the number one virus of the year.
Sophos said that Klez accounted for almost one in four virus infections, and McAfee, which did not have exact figures, confirmed that Klez easily achieved the highest number of infected files.
Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos, explained that companies need to look at why end-users are accessing certain applications.
“The real weak link is humans, not the bugs in Microsoft’s software,” he said. “Businesses need to think carefully about their users’ use of applications like Instant Messenger.”
Jack Clark, product marketing manager at McAfee, added that organisations should focus on policy and educating users rather than just technology.
“The main threat is from the user, so companies need to focus on scanning the users for their vulnerabilities,” he said.
The main virus threats businesses can expect to face next year include more devious mass-mailing worms, infections from malicious code on web pages and file-sharing.
“The emergence of broadband this year has led to increased file-sharing and that increases the number of viruses shared,” said Clark.
Cluley pointed out that companies can protect themselves against email worms by educating end-users and deploying email gateway protection to stop executable files before they reach the corporate network.
“Give staff simple rules – like don’t open any executable files – and you can dramatically reduce the chances of infection,” he explained. “And stop executable code coming into the organisation by blocking it at the gateway.”
Although attacks on Unix systems are still a rare occurrence, at only 0.2 per cent, Cluley indicated that these are likely to increase.
“We are seeing more and more interest in cracking Unix systems. This threat is increasing,” he warned.
Clark said that, until there was wider adoption of the Unix platform, Microsoft exploits would remain the dominant threat. Just 10 or 15 of the 70,000 attacks registered by McAfee were aimed at Unix systems.
Mobile and personal digital assistant viruses are also not expected to make any significant impact in 2003. “Virus authors tend to target the mass market,” said Clark.

Adware dominates PC malware infections. Users are still the weakest link.

Adware rather than spyware is the most common problem code on PCs, according to a recent survey of infected PCs. The research, conducted by privacy company Webroot, found that seven of the top 10 types of malware were related to advertising, usually redirecting searches or monitoring user activity to display targeted advertising. Two of the 10 are re-diallers and one is a key-logger for stealing security codes.

“Our most recent research shows that spyware writers are continuing to innovate and find new, more deviant ways to infiltrate systems,” said Richard Stiennon, vice president of threat research at Webroot.”The increased presence of hijackers, diallers and key-loggers in our findings demonstrates that the new trend is to go straight for the jugular. CoolWebSearch, a particularly nasty hijacking program with dozens of iterations, was found on nearly 10 per cent of all audited systems.”CoolWebSearch and the rest of the top five in Webroot’s list were all advertising-based. This malware is designed to divert web searches to other domains to drive up traffic for specific sites or display certain adverts based on computer users’ activities.

But these are consumers make it easy for e-commerce hackers

US consumers are unwittingly helping hackers target e-business firms by leaving themselves “woefully unprotected” from spam, key-logging and phishing attacks, research has claimed.

A newly published poll of 11,000 US residential email users and small to medium sized businesses found that users are the weakest link for banks, retailers and other online businesses, offering hackers “an easy way in”.

The study, commissioned by email filtering managed service providers, indicated that almost two thirds of consumers have no anti-spam filtering installed.

However, the report noted that it is not financially or technically viable for residential users or small businesses to arm their desktop with all the filters required to provide corporate-level protection. Over half of consumers recognise that multiple scanners are now required.

“It is in the banks’ and retailers’ interests to get consumer protection right, whether by approaching government, endorsing those ISPs that offer sufficient protection or paying for secure telecoms infrastructure (e.g. VPNs) for their client base.”

The results of the survey arrived in the same week that HSBC announced that it may refuse customers access to online banking unless they show that they have adequate protection.

In the fight against credit card fraud Mastercard has closed down 1,000 sites containing details of 35,000 credit cards.

Spyware can be installed on your company computer without your knowledge and can use keystroke logging techniques to collect passwords you enter, your bank account numbers and PINs, your credit card numbers, and other personal information. The effects of this identity theft can be costly and very time consuming to rectify. Everyone should take steps to detect and remove any spyware running on their computers, and to guard against its future installation.

A related category of software, adware, may cause pop-up advertisements to appear on your screen, change your home page, disrupt your network access, and reduce the stability and usability of your system. The products mentioned below can help you detect, remove, and protect your computer from both these types of attack.

Spyware is a significant problem for all Windows users. If you use Windows, you must have at least one spyware detection program installed on your computer (in addition to your virus protection program and your frewall). At this writing, adware and spyware are not significant issues for Macintosh users.

That’s why firewalls and antivirus software are needed to keep your computer of computer network secure.

Network security consists of the provisions made in an underlying computer network infrastructure, policies adopted by the network administrator to protect the network and the network-accessible resources from unauthorized access and the effectiveness (or lack) of these measures combined together. How different is it from computer security? In plain words…

Securing any network infrastructure is like securing possible entry points of attacks on a country by deploying appropriate defense. Computer security is more like providing means of self-defense to each individual citizen of the country. The former is better and practical to protect the civilians from getting exposed to the attacks. The preventive measures attempt to secure the access to individual computers–the network itself–thereby protecting the computers and other shared resources such as printers, network-attached storage connected by the network. Attacks could be stopped at their entry points before they spread. As opposed to this, in computer security the measures taken are focused on securing individual computer hosts. A computer host whose security is compromised is likely to infect other hosts connected to a potentially unsecured network. A computer host’s security is vulnerable to users with higher access privileges to those hosts.

Network security starts from authenticating any user. Once authenticated, firewall enforces access policies such as what services are allowed to be accessed by the network users. Though effective to prevent unauthorized access, this component fails to check potentially harmful contents such as computer worms being transmitted over the network. An intrusion prevention system (IPS)[1] helps detect and prevent such malware. IPS also monitors for suspicious network traffic for contents, volume and anomalies to protect the network from attacks such as denial of service. Communication between two hosts using the network could be encrypted to maintain privacy. Individual events occurring on the network could be tracked for audit purposes and for a later high level analysis.

Honeypots, essentially decoy network-accessible resources, could be deployed in a network as surveillance and early-warning tools. Techniques used by the attackers that attempt to compromise these decoy resources are studied during and after an attack to keep an eye on new exploitation techniques. Such analysis could be used to further tighten security of the actual network being protected

Detecting and Removing Spyware

Computer anti-virus software is extremely helpful, but it will only catch viruses that it KNOWS about — that is, viruses that it’s already been programmed to catch. Nowadays, unfornately, anti-virus software can easily be disabled by the latest viruses.
As part of the service, Joe NYC will check your anti-virus software to determine if you have an effective anti-virus program, and that it has the latest updates — Joe NYC can configure your anti-virus software to get the latest updates automatically for you.

If you have a computer virus.

Particularly bad computer viruses can be difficult to remove, but Joe NYC has the equipment and expertise to remove them for you — with on-site pickup and delivery of your computer.
If you suspect that your computer has a virus, or you need help with anti-virus software, call Joe NYC Expert Computer Consultation immediately at (212)777-2986.

Your passwords are the keys you use to access personal information that you’ve stored on your computer and in your online accounts. If criminals or other malicious users steal this
information, they can use your name to open new credit card accounts, apply for a mortgage, or pose as you in online transactions. In many cases you would not notice these attacks until it was too late.   
Fortunately, it is not hard to create strong passwords  and keep them well protected.

What makes a strong password?

To an attacker, a strong password should appear to be a random string of characters. The following criteria can help your passwords do so:

Make it lengthy. Each character that you add to your password increases the protection of your computer of computer network, and that it provides many times over. Your passwords should be 8 or more characters in length; 14 characters or longer is ideal. Many systems also support use of the space bar in passwords, so you can create a phrase made of many words (a “pass phrase”). A pass phrase is often easier to remember than a simple password, as well as longer and harder to guess. Combine letters, numbers, and symbols. The greater variety of characters that you have in your password, the harder it is to guess. Other important specifics include:

The fewer types of characters in your password, the longer it must be. A 15-character password composed only of random letters and numbers is about 33,000 times stronger than an 8-character password composed of characters from the entire keyboard. If you cannot create a password that contains symbols, you need to make it considerably longer to get the same degree of protection. An ideal password combines both length and different types of symbols.

Use the entire keyboard, not just the most common characters. Symbols typed by holding down the “Shift” key and typing a number are very common in passwords. Your password will be much stronger if you choose from all the symbols on the keyboard, including punctuation marks not on the upper row of the keyboard, and any symbols unique to your language.

Use words and phrases that are easy for you to remember, but difficult for others to guess. The easiest way to remember your passwords and pass phrases is to write them down. Contrary to popular belief, there is nothing wrong with writing passwords down, but they need to be adequately protected in order to remain secure and effective, and keep your computer of computer network protected. In general, passwords written on a piece of paper are more difficult to compromise across the Internet than a password manager, Web site, or other software-based storage tool, such as password managers. Create a strong, memorable password in 6 steps Use these steps to develop a strong password:

1.Think of a sentence that you can remember. This will be the basis of your strong password or pass phrase. Use a memorable sentence, such as “My son Aiden is three years old.”

2.Check if the computer or online system supports the pass phrase directly. If you can use a pass phrase (with spaces between characters) on your computer or online system, do so.

3.If the computer or online system does not support pass phrases, convert it to a password. Take the first letter of each word of the sentence that you’ve created to create a new, nonsensical word. Using the example above, you’d get: “msaityo”.

4.Add complexity by mixing uppercase and lowercase letters and numbers. It is valuable to use some letter swapping or misspellings as well. For instance, in the pass phrase above, consider misspelling Aiden’s name, or substituting the word “three” for the number 3. There are many possible substitutions, and the longer the sentence, the more complex your password can be. Your pass phrase might become “My SoN Ayd3N is 3 yeeRs old.” If the computer or online system will not support a pass phrase, use the same technique on the shorter password. This might yield a password like “MsAy3yo”. 5.Finally, substitute some special characters. You can use symbols that look like letters, combine words (remove spaces) and other ways to make the password more complex. Using these tricks, we create a pass phrase of “MySoN 8N i$ 3 yeeR$ old” or a password (using the first letter of each word) “M$8ni3y0″.

6.Test your new password with Password Checker. Password Checker is a non-recording feature on this Web site that helps determine your password’s strength as you type.

Password strategies to avoid.

Some common methods used to create passwords are easy to guess by criminals. To avoid weak, easy-to-guess passwords: Avoid sequences or repeated characters. “12345678,” “222222,” “abcdefg,” or adjacent letters on your keyboard do not help make secure passwords. Avoid using only look-alike substitutions of numbers or symbols. Criminals and other malicious users who know enough to try and crack your password will not be fooled by common look-alike replacements, such as to replace an ‘i’ with a ’1′ or an ‘a’ with ‘@’ as in “M1cr0$0ft” or “P@ssw0rd“. But these substitutions can be effective when combined with other measures, such as length, misspellings, or variations in case, to improve the strength of your password. Avoid your login name. Any part of your name, birthday, social security number, or similar information for your loved ones constitutes a bad password choice. This is one of the first things criminals will try.

Avoid dictionary words in any language. Criminals use sophisticated tools that can rapidly guess passwords that are based on words in multiple dictionaries, including words spelled backwards, common misspellings, and substitutions. This includes all sorts of profanity and any word you would not say in front of your children. Use more than one password everywhere. If any one of the computers or online systems using this password is compromised, all of your other information protected by that password should be considered compromised as well. It is critical to use different passwords for different systems. Avoid using online storage. If malicious users find these passwords stored online or on a networked computer, they have access to all your information.

The “blank password” option A blank password (no password at all) on your account is more secure than a weak password such as “1234″. Criminals can easily guess a simplistic password, but on computers using Windows XP, an account without a password cannot be accessed remotely by means such as a network or the Internet. (This option is not available for Microsoft Windows 2000, Windows Me, or earlier versions) You can choose to use a blank password on your computer account if these criteria are met: You only have one computer or you have several computers but you do not need to access information on one computer from another one The computer is physically secure (you trust everyone who has physical access to the computer)

The use of a blank password is not always a good idea. For example, a laptop computer that you take with you is probably not physically secure, so on those you should have a strong password.

How to access and change your passwords

Web sites have a variety of policies that govern how you can access your account and change your password. Look for a link (such as “my account”) somewhere on the site’s home page that goes to a special area of the site that allows password and account management. Computer passwords The Help files for your computer operating system will usually provide information about how to create, modify, and access password-protected user accounts, as well as how to require password protection upon startup of your computer. You can also try to find this information online at the software manufacturer’s Web site. For example, if you use Microsoft Windows XP, online help can show you how to manage passwords, change passwords, and more.

Keep your passwords secret Treat your passwords and pass phrases with as much care as the information that they protect. Don’t reveal them to others.

Keep your passwords hidden from friends or family members (especially children) who could pass them on to other less trustworthy individuals. Passwords that you need to share with others, such as the password to your online banking account that you might share with your spouse, are the only exceptions.

Protect any recorded passwords. Be careful where you store the passwords that you record or write down. Do not leave these records of your passwords anywhere that you would not leave the information that they protect.

Never provide your password over e-mail or based on an e-mail request. Any e-mail that requests your password or requests that you to go to a Web site to verify your password is almost certainly a fraud. This includes requests from a trusted company or individual. E-mail can be intercepted in transit, and e-mail that requests information might not be from the sender it claims. Internet “phishing” scams use fraudulent e-mail messages to entice you into revealing your user names and passwords, steal your identity, and more. Learn more about phishing scams and how to deal with online fraud. Change your passwords regularly. This can help keep criminals and other malicious users unaware. The strength of your password will help keep it good for a longer time.

A password that is shorter than 8 characters should be considered only good for a week or so, while a password that is 14 characters or longer (and follows the other rules outlined above) can be good for several years.

Do not type passwords on computers that you do not control. Computers such as those in Internet cafes, computer labs, shared systems, kiosk systems, conferences, and airport lounges should be considered unsafe for any personal use other than anonymous Internet browsing. Do not use these computers to check online e-mail, chat rooms, bank balances, business mail, or any other account that requires a user name and password. Criminals can purchase keystroke logging devices for very little money and they take only a few moments to install. These devices let malicious users harvest all the information typed on a computer from across the Internet—your passwords and pass phrases are worth as much as the information that they protect.

What to do if your password is stolen

Be sure to monitor all the information you protect with your passwords, such as your monthly financial statements, credit reports, online shopping accounts, and so on. Strong, memorable passwords can help protect you against fraud and identity theft, but there are no guarantees. No matter how strong your password is, if someone breaks into the system that stores it, they will have your password. If you notice any suspicious activity that could indicate that someone has accessed your information, notify authorities as quickly as you can. Get more information on what to do if you think your identity has been stolen or you’ve been similarly defrauded.