Don't be a victim of cyber crime

A recent survey by Get Safe Online reported that more people felt threatened by cyber crime (21%) than were worried about being burglarised (16%). Following this, the BBC have been running their own Honeypot Project to log the many attacks an internet ready PC faces every day.

Stage 1 of their investigation was to leave a standard specification PC connected to the internet and log the number of malicious connection attempts. Predictably, the machine averaged one minor attack every 15 minutes with at least one major attack every hour. These major attacks could, at best, render the machine unusable and at worst transfer control of the machine to 'cyber criminals'.

Stage 2 was to turn off the firewall software and allow the malicious programs to infect the machine. By clicking on the "security warning" adverts (all fake) that regularly pop up on an unprotected machine they were quickly told the PC was infected with hundreds of spyware, adware and malware programs (when in fact it wasn't) and that money must be exchanged before the machine could be fixed.

One site offering security software then installed a program without permission and then download more programs from other sites - some of which were similarly infected machines being used as servers. After installing new programs, favourites lists, toolbars and high jacking internet traffic the machine became so unstable that it could not even be shut down. If this computer had not been pre-configured to "roll back" to settings saved before infection, all information on the hard drive would have been lost.

So, what can you do to prevent this happening to you? Quite simply, you need to invest some time (and quite possibly money) in getting up to date anti-virus, anti-spyware and firewall software. Then make sure they are all turned on, running and are kept up to date as well as running regular updates of your core operating software (such as Microsoft Windows).

Our computing section will help you find everything you need from service providers offering broadband internet connections with pre-configured anti-virus, anti-spam and firewall software or shops and retailers selling only reputable PC security software.

And if the honeypot project interested you, find out more at BBC News: Technology - as they plan to investigate further into the world of hackers, spam and phishing over the rest of the week - or at www.honeynet.org - who dedicate their time to improving the security of the internet.