Pkchukiss - Reality Wine

As far as I can remember, the PCs of my friends are ridden with a delightful range of unwanted applications, ranging from the persistent adwares that would magically re-install themselves after having been forcibly removed, to silent intelligence-oriented spywares that send in their bank log-in information to a gloating hacker in a remote location miles away.

I would help them remove some of the rampant infestation using the available tools from the Internet, but no tool is ever perfectly accurate in pin-pointing these nuisances, so discreet programmes that are adept at cloaking themselves from detection act as trojan horses, and race to re-download their fellow comrades as soon as the anti-spyware tools aren’t looking.

You would be surprised just how many users don’t want their anti-spyware tools to run continuously. Ironically, being the most visible programme, people tend to think that it occupies “space”, and would close it whenever possible. They remain blissfully unaware than many more applications keep on running, even without having a visible interface.

The unsolicitation market is vast, not just in cyberspace, but also on the streets. If geeks ever bothered to take the time off their intense obsession with their beloved rigs, they would marvel at how much the situation is mirrored on the street. The average street is littered with sales personnel, surveyors, cheats, beggars who specialised in attempting to relieve you of your wallet.

What happens on the street occurs online in the form of spam. Companies engage the services of a professional spammer to plaster a few million copies of in-your-face advertising into every conceivable mailbox that the automated mailer can generate. Nigerian Scheme scammers pose as royalty of Nigeria sitting onto a US$3 million stash belonging to a deceased relative, yet others hold animal lovers hostage by threatening to kill a rabbit unless the perpetrators are paid off handsomely.

While most people are street-smart enough to avoid being duped in the real world, they are not as savvy with the Internet. By treating every e-mail with the same trust as postal mail, businessmen out for a quick profit soon find themselves in for a fast loss.

Users who do not bother to keep a small persistent antivirus, firewall, and anti-spyware programme soon find themselves with parasitical programs that rob other legitimate programmes of running space without even noticing it.

If you won’t have sex without protection, don’t use the Internet without protection. Protection keeps you safe; use it.

Filed under: General