6 Greed

This is by far the fastest way to get viruses onto your machine, pure greed and wanting something for nothing. Every day people are searching for illegal music and films to download, illegal software and porn. Actually, they are mainly looking for porn!  Super-fast home broadband and the ever-decreasing price of digital storage has also played its part, where a lifetime of music or a collection of Hollywood movies can now fit onto a small cheap USB stick and can be downloaded in hours instead of days. Like Venus Fly Traps the criminals just wait for you to come to them, with offers of the latest Hollywood blockbuster, a singer’s latest video and a reality TV star’s latest homemade porn video.

Digital video and audio files are one of the easiest ways to trick someone into installing a virus. Because these files are squashed down versions of the original content, achieved through software algorithms known as codecs. New codecs and formats are constantly being written or the existing ones improved, so it’s not uncommon to have to download a particular codec or plugin in order to play back a video file, but this is normally done from within the audio or video application. If a website or browser popup ever asks to download something in order to play an online music track or watch a video, stop, there is a high chance that it is a virus.

Give someone something that should have been paid for FREE and see how fast they click that YES button. Hacked software can be altered to do more than just bypass the user authentication system, but as you think you are saving hundreds of pounds or dollars, security is the last thing on your mind. Some software has costs in the thousands (e.g. Adobe Creative Master Suite or Autodesk Revit) which makes it a very tempting option to criminals to hack into and add their own ‘additions’ and then offer it out. So, if you download illegal movies and cracked software, don’t be too surprised if you have also picked up some undesirable additions as well. Sticking to legitimate supplier’s websites goes a long way to improving your internet security, believe it or not, actually paying for stuff can work out cheaper in the long run. There is no point in searching for and installing illegal software of high-end applications that you don’t know how to use and probably never have a use for anyway. Even if you did have a use, you would rarely use more than the basic features. It’s a bit like having stolen cars in your garage that you don’t know how to drive, other than in first gear. For most situations, there are free and legal software alternatives to high end software packages, so why take the risk of infecting your machine for no reason.

Pay per view sports events are one of latest the easy targets for criminals, offering free access to a premium sporting event supposedly streamed via a foreign TV station. Dedicated fans will go to great lengths to watch their teams, so getting them to download and install a small ‘add-on’ or streaming viewer is quite easy. If you are lucky, you’ll get to watch the elusive match with the commentary in another language, either way your computer will be full of trojans and malware which may end up costing you more than an actual ticket to the live event.

Believe it or not, this is a fake website. This isn’t the Mirror newspaper and Jim Davidson doesn’t want you to invest your life savings in Bitcoin, but the criminals do. Unfortunately, people fall for celebrity endorsements, and some have lost thousands falling for these scams.

Here the criminals have gone to great lengths to create a convincing clone of the Mirror newspaper website and hope that you don’t spot the web domain is actually fastdietline.net rather than www.mirror.co.uk because the headline has your full attention. With fraud scams like these you are in danger of losing more than just the money you initially ‘invest’ as you are giving the criminals a ton of personal and financial information, which can easily lead to identify theft.

By also asking for your Bitcoin wallet and ‘conveniently’ taking you to a fake login page for the Bitcoin exchange you use (or suggest one if you don’t) you end up giving them your username and password too. This means that the criminals could transfer Bitcoins from your account at any point in the future, that is though, probably after they have bought some more on your behalf using your credit cards. Either way it is not a good situation to be in, all for the sake of what is essentially a fake get rich quick scheme, where the criminals that get rich, not you.

Index or next chapter 7 Porn