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The following advice continues on the theme of security. Some of what I will discuss may be old news for some of you, but for many it will be new. It is important information and if you are just receiving these newsletters (new customers) and would like to get past newsletters, please send me a request and I will email them to you. Note: All newsletters are currently online.

Banking Online

Yesterday, a customer asked me about bank security (as far as banking on the Internet goes). This person has a lot of money in their account and they are very concerned (as they should be). I personally bank online as it is very convenient and if you follow a few simple steps, you can too safely. Here are some tips that I recommend:

1. First and foremost, make sure your system is clean. By that, I mean make sure you do not have spyware, malware, viruses, scumware or keyloggers on your computer. Also, make sure you are behind a firewall (either software or better yet a router). Not sure if you are protected, go to a site that probes your ports (one such site is https://www.grc.com/x/ne.dll?bh0bkyd2).
2. DO NOT DO ANY BANKING OR FINANCIAL TRANSACTIONS AT WORK. YOU DO NOT KNOW WHO IS WATCHING YOUR TRAFFIC ON YOUR NETWORK.
3. If you are surfing with a wireless connection, you need to take special precautions. You must always assume someone is intercepting your transmissions. Get Ipig from Opus here: http://www.iopus.com/ipig/ and install it (it is a zero configuration install...very easy install).
4. Like anything else, security starts by knowing who you are dealing with (in this case the web site). Although not mentioned in this current article http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=201&tag=nl.e550 one of the best tools is Spoofstick. This is an extension that is available for both Firefox and Internet Explorer. If you browse without it... shame on you. Spoofstick by CoreStreet can be found here: http://www.spoofstick.com/ (Firefox Versions up to 1.5.*). I suggest reading the web page so this all makes sense to you. If you have trouble installing it, let me know (there are some steps that may confuse you).
5. Remember, banks do not request personal information from an email, however if you think an email is legit, take the time to call the bank. If you go to a link within the email, look at the site your actually on by viewing spoofstick. I have found that generally the email to get information from me illegally is old, and the sites already shut down, but this is not always the case! By the way, Thunderbird will also warn you if it finds a link suspicious. Thunderbird is Mozilla's email client and can be downloaded from here: http://www.mozilla.com/thunderbird/.

If you take the steps above and read the information from the links I provided, you will be providing yourself with a good defense against the "bad guys". Finally, I want to briefly mention what spoofstick does. After you have it installed and viewable, you will see the site that you are in fact on. Take the time and get used to looking at spoofstick when you are doing any banking or financial transactions. If the site looks like your bank, but spoofstick says you are on for example "Iamascumbucketandwantyourmoney.com", then I would not use that site and I would report it! That's it, and as you can see, with just a few steps you can reasonably protect yourself.