It’s that time of year again when the shops are crazy with Christmas shoppers looking for the perfect gift for friends and family, but for those of us who are too busy (or sane) to go shopping then the Internet is the best place to find the latest gadgets at the lowest prices.

Each year Brits are spending more online over the Christmas period than ever before, taking a look at last year’s figures 44% of the UK’s Internet adult population increased online spending compared to 2009 according to eConsultancy.com taking the total amount spent online to £6.8bn in December according to the Guardian.co.uk. Although part of this increase will be due to the extremely bad weather conditions experienced last December.

Guest Article by Louise Goldstein

Computer users are rightly paranoid about getting the right antivirus software for their machine, but internet criminals come in many shapes and guises and the US authorities have just shut down a number of file-sharing websites.

Software antivirus applications get all the attention, but its also websites that sell counterfeit goods and pirated content that can cause a lot of trouble.

And now action has been taken by the US Immigration Customs Enforcement Agency (known as ICE) which has aggressively closed down 70 rogue websites.

A number of domains have been seized, including those selling fake designer clothing and those offering music downloads. Also seized was a domain which included a BitTorrent search engine.

The seized domains included: “Torrent-Finder.com; mydreamwatches.com; rapgodfathers.com; burberryoutletshop.com; and, Louis-vuitton-outlet-store.com.

Those searching for the seized domains were greeted with new landing home pages which declared that the Immigration Customs Enforcement Agency had done its worst and reminded readers that the should be aware that the website had broken US laws as regards the trafficking in counterfeit goods and copyright infringement.

The problem for the US authorities, that many of the affected websites just switched urls and continued trading.

By taking this action, the US authorities do not seize any content, or block the use of the IP address, but they do gain control of the domain name and in reality, load their own home page which disrupts the website. It is an effective strategy, although the site owners quickly get around the problem by shifting their content to a new url.

The UK is trying to get itself similar powers. The Serious and Organised Crime Agency looks across at its US cousins with envy and is asking Parliament for an ability to seize domains which it can prove are involved in some sort of criminal activity.

It’s good news for internet shoppers, although won’t prevent the millions of cons and tricks being currently played out on unsuspecting surfers. The best advice is still to operate a high quality antivirus software application and guard yourself at source.

Guest Article by Neil Camp 

It’s likely that the Burmese military leaders might be in the market for some antivirus software in order to help fend off a massive net attack which came just before the election.

Although no matter how many antivirus reviews they read, it might be to no avail, as a massive and concerted computer attack knocked Burma off the internet which happened before its first election in over 20 years on 7 November.

Many countries have not recognised the elections as being open and honest, with many claiming that the military authorities will rig the election to get the results they want. Election observers and media from outside the country have not been allowed access.

Security software experts believe that the net attacks started on 25 October, but grew to a peak just before election. And they say it was a deliberate attempt to overwhelm the country and knock it from the internet.

Burmese officials admit that the attack is currently ongoing. Despite obvious signs to the contrary, the Burmese generals are promising that the elections will lead to future democratic rule.

Many not surprisingly dispute this claim, saying that the election is nothing more than a sham and is in fact an attempt to keep the military not only in power, but also to tighten their grip on absolute political control.

The party most likely to succeed in the elections, the National League for Democracy (NLD) was not allowed to participate. It’s leader Aung San Suu Kyi remains under house arrest. It was her party that won a landslide victory in 1990 –a result which was declared null and void by the military leaders.

The attack takes the form of a Distributed Denial of Service, which is known as a DDoS. It’s simple in nature and acts to flood a target with too much data, effectively making it give up after being over-loaded.

The power to launch such a DDoS is gathered together using botnets which are networks of compromised computers – some in the home, some in the office – that are machines which have been enslaved by a malicious virus and periodically exploited to attach others. Thus machines from around the world will have been used in the attack.

The problem for Burma is that its links to the internet via satellites and cables that support data at around a maximum transfer speed of around 45 megabits of data per second. When the attack was at its worst, the connections were being bombarded with around ten gigabits of data every second, bringing the system crashing down. Experts said that the attacks were extremely sophisticated and were coming from many different sources.

A spokesman for the Burmese Yatanarpon Teleport company had told the AFP News Agency, before the election:
"Our technicians have been trying to prevent cyber attacks from other countries. We still do not know whether access will be good on the election day.”

A good time to read our own antivirus reviews perhaps?

Guest Article by Neil Camp  

A survey from a major website has confirmed what many in the internet security antivirus industry have believed for a long time, that the average person in the UK does not exercise the same degree of caution online as they would on the telephone.

The research was carried out by Protectmyid.co.uk and reveals a worrying trend for those in the internet security antivirus business. With online threats easily the fastest growing crime globally, the results of the research are a concern to many. For example, many people (51%) use the same password for some or even all of their online accounts. A further 52% admitted that they never change their password, or only do when they are prompted to do so by the website, or when they believe their online account’s privacy may be compromised.

Passwords were, the study revealed, worryingly weak. To make their password, 24% of the respondents used their town of birth, 18% their date of birth, and another 18% used the names of their past schools. Unfortunately, these are the three of the top ten pieces of personal detail internet users tend to include on their profiles on social networking and dating sites. This only makes guessing at a password easier for hackers.

"The results of our research show that the message of identity fraud is still not being heard. The Internet is accessible to almost everyone and as the number of users grow, so do those using it for criminal purposes. Users need to be aware of what information they are giving out online and who might be accessing it. People are clearly aware of the dangers of giving away personal details to strangers calling them up on the phone, so why are they giving this information away to a huge audience online?" explains Pete Turner, Managing Director of Experian Interactive.

Despite all the warnings, the general public are still not correctly protecting themselves on the internet, and in fact many are encouraging threats to happen by their lack of action. The internet security antivirus industry will have its work cut out in the future to encourage safety online, and to drive home the message that keeping one’s personal details safe is essential to using the internet, even on a simple day-to-day basis.

Guest Article by Neil Camp 

Major internet security software company AVG Technologies has started a new online campaign to help University students with the threat of status jacking on Facebook.

For all companies in the internet security software sector, coping with the threats on Facebook and other social bookmarking websites has become a key concern. The problem of Facebook status is an age-old problem for users of the website. ‘Status jacking’ comes about by stolen or misplaced account information being used by a friend or a criminal to post embarrassing or personal statuses on someone else’s Facebook.

The campaign began after, research carried out by AVG’s ‘Threat Labs’, highlighted the serious threat social networking sites pose to internet users. AVG Threat Labs found that there were 19,491 compromised web pages on the 50 top global social networking websites. 11,701 of these can be found on Facebook, which still resides as top dog in the social networking hierarchy. Just behind Facebook was YouTube, the popular video sharing website, with 7,163 of the compromised web pages.

It is easy to see why students are the most at risk from having their statuses hijacked on Facebook; Facebook’s majority of members are of the 18-25 age bracket, with the website being popular with this student age group the world over.

Ambassador of Free Tony Anscombe said: “The fact that we found almost 20,000 compromised web pages on the world’s most popular social networking sites should make social media users sit up and take notice. In particular, it is the audience most active on these sites, those under 25 years old who are most at risk. Our campaign will involve further research showing that only a few students take proper social network precautions, as well as a series of informative but also fun, guides and videos.”

Of course, to make matters worse, research also points to another worrying statistic. 18-25 year olds are well established as being the age group least likely to protect themselves against internet security threats; many are sloppy when it comes to keeping their computer’s protected and many simply ignore the dangers altogether. Whereas 23% of internet users are concerned about their security when using the internet (statistics from UK’s Ofcom Communications Market Report), only 15% of 16-24 year olds are as concerned. Privacy has even more dire statistics for this age bracket; only 9% actively care about the threat to their privacy whilst online.

It seems that the new online campaign by AVG is needed, then, to ensure that university students and others of a similar age are given the tools needed to effectively protect themselves whilst using the internet; especially the social networking sites that they so often use. Other internet security software companies will no doubt be looking into similar ideas to try to keep the younger population protected from the potential dangers of the internet.

Guest Article by Neil Camp