Getting hooked: Phishing, pharming and online threats

Agent Peterson: Hello. My name is Agent Peterson, with the Geek Squad. The subject of this video is: "Don't Get Hooked: Phishing, Farming, and Online Threats."

We at the Geek Squad take about 50% percent of our calls related to spyware and virus activity, people losing personal information, or even losing their identities. So we're going to talk about a few different things today. First is, what are spyware and viruses? Second, how to protect and prevent getting infected. Third, some best practices to keep your family computing safe at home.

So what are spyware and viruses? Well, there's two real distinctive differences between the two. A virus comes in with the sole intent to destroy as much of your information as possible, replicate itself, and send itself as far across the Internet as it can as fast as it can.

Spyware actually has several different parts to it. They come in the form of malware, hijackers, phishing, farming, and its scariest identity theft. Spyware wants to find out as much information as it can about you and then report that information off to other remote places, so that they can more effectively advertise or get your identity and start stealing and using your credit cards for things that you don't necessarily want.

There's lots of different ways to protect and prevent these kind of things from happening to you.

First off, some of the basics are:

Antivirus. You want to make sure you have at least one solid antivirus solution. In this situation, having more isn't necessarily better. Having multiple antiviruses can actually cause the programs to conflict and not actually get anything done for you.

Having a good, solid anti spyware program is going to keep a lot of these other baddies away, making sure that you're not compromising your identity, you credit cards, or your financial lifestyle.

Having a good firewall is going to help keep hackers out of your computer. And for your average user, I really recommend a hardware firewall versus a software firewall, just because it's going to be a lot less complex and you're not likely to lock yourself out of your own machine.

Next, you want to make sure that you run your updates. Running Windows updates and running antivirus updates are all very important things to keep your software safe and make sure that you're not subject to any of the online threats.

Lastly, I would make sure that at least once a month you go through and run your scans manually, not just automated. By running them automated, that's good, but if the computer's turned off, it's not going to get a chance to run its scans. If you run them manually at least once a month, you're guaranteeing that you're going to be safe.

Lastly, we'll go over some best practices, things like passwords. Make sure that you're using passwords that are at least six to eight characters; that creates a nice, strong password for you. And make sure it's a combination of letters and numbers. Also, try to avoid using anything about yourself within your passwords: using your name or your kids' names. These aren't safe and secure passwords to use.

Also, avoid using autosave. More than likely, if you're using autosave, you're going to forget what the password is, and it's going to be a hassle to try to figure it out later.

Next: location. Make sure you use your PC in a public place within your home. You don't want to have it away in a bedroom or somewhere where the kids can use it where you're not able to watch them. More than likely, the teenagers are going to get into things and download things that you don't want them to, which puts you more at risk for spyware and viruses.

Next: email. Do not ever respond to spam messages. If they say, "Please respond to take this off your list," more than likely you're just going to get more spam after that, because it lets them know that they've hit a live email address.

And lastly: online purchasing. Always look for something that says "VeriSign Approved" or "Hacker Safe." These are safe and notable websites, where you don't have to worry about your credit card being leaked across the Internet.

There's hundreds of new pieces of spyware that come out every single day. And by following these simple steps of protection and prevention and best practices, you'll help keep yourself and your family safe and online.