Internet safety tips from the Cultrix superheroes

The internet has revolutionised the world we live in. It keeps us connected at all times, and has changed the way we live our lives. You used to have to wait a day to read about an event in a newspaper, now news breaks online within minutes. The internet is amazing; it allows us to connect with family and friends across the world and breaks down the boundaries of traditional information gathering and learning - bringing everything closer to us.

Despite the many fantastic things the internet does for us, it has a darker side. There are dangers to using the internet and it's important to keep these in mind. Our list of internet safety tips will therefore help you to protect yourself from some of the threats online.

Spam, spam, spam

Generally, spam is a relatively mild form of danger. More often than not, your email client will filter spam out of your regular inbox and put them in a spam folder. If this isn't the case, you may require a spam filter. Many cloud-based email services (such as Office 365 and Google Apps for Work) have spam filtering built in too.

Sometimes spam is just a nuisance and nothing more. However, spam can be used to spread malicious content and can often contain 'phishing' attempts within them, which are the dangerous ones. Keeping internet safety in mind, there's a few things to remember about spam:

When you receive an email in your inbox that looks like it might be spam, don't click any of the attachments, or download and open them on your PC. Some email clients, such as Gmail will let you preview an attachment in your browser without downloading it to your PC. Even something that seems as harmless as a text document could contain malicious software and give you a nasty computer virus. So if something doesn't seem quite right, it probably isn't.

Sometimes spam contains phishing attempts. Phishing is a process which tries to acquire sensitive information about you, such as your identity, passwords and banking details. Often these emails imitate the emails that come from reputable companies, such as Google, Facebook, PayPal and banks. However, most of these companies will address you by your name and never ask you for personal information in reply to an email.

So, when receiving an email that looks like it's from your bank, or PayPal and it has a generic opening such as "Dear customer" it's likely to be a phishing attempt. Sometimes these emails can be very convincing. If you get an email like this, don't click any of the links. Go to Google and search for the site the email is supposed to be from and login from there.

Links from phishing attempts often lead to login pages that look like the login pages from the website they're trying to imitate, often the URL even looks like it could be from that organisation. However, instead of logging into the service the site is trying to imitate you're actually giving your details over to total strangers. As stated earlier, if something seems fishy go to Google search and try to access the website from there - not from the link in the email.

Downloading software from the internet

Many software vendors now offer their software via online downloads, as opposed to being loaded onto CDs to insert into your PC to install the files. Infact, a lot of software that you buy in stores now doesn't even come on a disk. They come with a product code that you type into a website then download the software from there.

The move to downloading software from the internet makes things a lot more convenient, after just a few clicks you can have the software you need all installed. It does however come with some risks, these few internet safety tips will help keep you safe when downloading software from the internet.

Only download from the official websites of software vendors. It seems like common sense but it's easy to stray onto the wrong website. Only download software from the vendor, for example if you're looking for Google Chrome make sure you get it from Google's official website, or if you're looking for Adobe reader go to Adobe's website.

If it's free, or cheap there's probably a catch. You wouldn't walk down an alley with someone offering cheap Rolex watches or Prada handbags so why would you do this online? Very often when you find software online that claims to be free versions of paid products there's something not right. These websites will contain counterfeit software and malicious content. Just like the cheap Rolex watches and Prada handbags are illegal so are free downloads of paid software. However if you want to try paid software, companies often have 30 day free trial periods. Note, these are NOT illegal.

Along with the legal issues that come from acquiring paid software for free, you can also get a nasty surprise. You could find this free software come bundled with adware and keyloggers. These are also some of the nasties that can come from bad email attachments and clicking on links to suspicious websites.

Get protected

Having a functional anti-virus and security software on your PC can save you from many of the nasties out there on the internet. A lot of antivirus software comes with internet safety features that warns you about websites with suspicious content and can protect you from phishing attempts.

Keep up to date. Making sure your software is current will help to protect you from the type of software that's designed to exploit bugs in the old software. So making sure you're on the latest version of Windows can help protect you from some of the dangers online. And try to use a modern web browser. Google Chrome, for example, will warn and prevent you from visiting dangerous websites.

Of course, no filter is perfect. New threats online arise everyday. Companies such as AVG essentially play a game of 'whackamole' to protect you against new viruses and threats, spam and phishing attempts. So every now and then, a new type of spam email will get through, however more often than not they find these cyber nasties before they come to you.

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