The Importance of Filtering Your Internet
It's a Dangerous World Out There
This is Randy Lawson, your intrepid and tenacious technology investigator, coming back at you this month with some more case studies. I’m not one to kid when things get serious. It can be a dangerous world out there, and the easy accessibility of internet technology can make it more so to the unsuspecting child or naïve parent. Naivety is something you typically see associated with children, but just like we had to program the VCR for our parents back in the day, today’s youth often know more about the services readily available in our home than we do.
But not only should we be worried about the kind of material our children have access to, we should also be concerned about giving access to sites of questionable value or that have links to malicious content. You know me. I had to ask the crew over at the Technology Center what this all meant.
They told me that malicious content includes, but is not limited to, a site being able to download encrypted malware onto my system. Some of it happens to be able to decompress and decipher itself. That definitely peeked the curiosity of this investigator. What can malware do to my system?
Malware includes things like computer viruses, Trojan horses, worms, ransomware, spyware, and scareware. Viruses are nasty things. Just like the flu can knock you off your feet for a while, a computer virus can knock your computers for a loop, self-replicating its program to infect your computer by inserting its own code into your computer’s programs.
Scareware is malicious software that “scares” you into buying unwanted software. Worms infect one computer and then using security holes, spread to other computers on the system. Trojan horses mislead computer users of their intent. When a link is clicked or an email attachment is opened, the Trojan horse creates a backdoor that can grant people that have no good will access to personal information, depending on what you keep on the computer.
This is why the crew at the Technology Center in Joplin, Missouri recommend that I filter my internet. They told me that I did not want these nasty little things to have access to my computer systems and my personal information.
The Case of the Digging Worm – CASE #2021-08
My name is Randy Lawson, technology investigator, and when it comes to computers and other gadgets and associated wizardry, I sometimes get lost among all the wires and bytes and lines of data. These are my adventures.
A friend that runs a local business called me the other day to tell me the computers in his three convenience stores all quit working. They turned on the computers that morning only to find themselves locked out. None of their passwords worked. This would affect his profitability as well as the well-being of his employees.
I hopped in my car and made a quick dash over to his main store. Sure enough, the login screen was useless. It wouldn’t even take his password. Every time he hit the enter key, it just went blank and then the login screen popped back up…empty.
My instincts went crazy. I knew this was going to be a difficult case. We shut down his system and called the Technology Center. They were able to get things cleaned up and running back in top condition.
Turned out that a piece of self-replicating code “wormed” its way into one of his computers and infected the rest of the network. It dropped its payload and highjacked the system to use it as a zombie, sending out spam emails to thousands of computers. I guess the warranties on a whole lot of cars had expired.
My friend and I asked Matt and crew what could have been done to prevent such a malicious attack. He runs convenient stores, and a lot of customers were inconvenienced that day. Matt suggested web content filtering.
There are a lot of sites on the web—over 4.5 billion in a recent assessment. This makes it nearly impossible to block all unwanted content. But a comprehensive filter that has the ability to update on a schedule and that allows changes goes a long way in stopping online threats.
Call the Technology Center for help in determining your internet filtering needs. Matt and crew can fix you up.
The Case of the Missing Data – CASE #2021-09
My name is Randy Lawson, technology investigator, and when it comes to computers and other gadgets and associated wizardry, I sometimes get lost among all the wires and bytes and lines of data. These are my adventures.
Another recent case had me deeply perplexed. A local school called me up, asking for help in locating some files that just up and disappeared from their computer systems. And it didn’t happen all at once either. Seems that over the past couple of weeks, ten to twenty files per day couldn’t be found.
After a week of this, the school principal decided to call in the expert. Off I went to track down these missing files with my sleuthing skills. It shouldn’t have been a problem, but this wasn’t like tracking down credit card purchases to follow someone that had dropped out of sight. This was serious. These files had personal information on them.
With the help of the Technology Center, we determined that the problem was a Trojan horse that had been attached to an innocuous looking email. When someone on the school staff opened it, everything started to fall apart.
The corrupting code opened a backdoor that allowed a remote user to extract data from the school’s computer systems. Matt suggested internet filtering in order to stop the loss of data. Filtering your internet can also prevent loss of productivity by preventing employees from accessing sites not related to their work function. Filtering will prevent such things as access to malicious sites, loss of productivity, inappropriate content leaving or entering the system, and being infiltrated by computer viruses and malicious programs.
Check with Matt and the folks at the Technology Center for help finding the solution to meet your home and business computer system needs. Remember, it is a dangerous world out there sometimes. Technology can be a wonderful part of your life, but you need to be careful.