Beware Viruses are Lurking
There are some nasty viruses going around at the moment that’ll either encrypt your data and demand a ransom to unlock it (easily resolved by restoring data from backups, but that does require time to do) or try to grab your username and password when you carry out activities such as Internet banking (possibly much more serious if this is successful). So here is a timely reminder!
- Never store banking passwords and usernames on your computers (or in fact any other security sensitive usernames and passwords unless you use a password safe);
- When creating online accounts always change your username (if possible as sometimes changing your username isn’t) and password the first time you use that online account (the email with the account creation details may get intercepted and this helps to counter that);
- Never open email attachments even if the email appears to come from an email address that you recognise (unless you can confirm from the alleged sender by other means that they really have sent you an email with an attachment);
- Never trust the from address in an email. The from email address is easily faked and most email systems make no attempt to verify this email address is really from the alleged sender;
- Never click on links, buttons or images in an email – no exceptions! If you need to visit a website after reading an email then type the website address into your web browser’s address bar;
- Exercise extreme caution when using Google (or any other search engine) and think about whether you should really click the result that Google is showing you – there are a lot of fake websites around;
- Never open a website that an incoming phone caller asks you to, no matter how plausible the caller may appear. Always ring that incoming caller back on a phone number that you can verify independently (i.e. do not use a phone number that the caller may give you to ring them back);
- Exercise extreme caution when visiting a website that you have been advised of in an advert, by word-of-mouth or in a letter.
If you think you may have a virus or would just like some more information on how you and your organisation can prevent a virus attack please give us a call on 0845 319 4887* or alternately click here to visit our website.
* Calls will cost 5p per minute plus your phone company’s access charge.
