PC Man's February Newlsetter

Do you use internet banking? How safe are you online? Check our guide

Why should you be worried?

You may be aware of the recent security breaches against over thirty companies including Google and Yahoo. This was because they, along with 20% of all internet users, were still running Microsoft's Internet Explorer 6 - the 10 year old, slowest, buggiest, most security-flawed browser on the market.

Hackers exploited those security flaws and IE6 was used to drop malware on the victim companies' computers which was then used to remote control computers belonging to these organizations, in an attempt to steal intellectual property, and in the case of Google, to gain access to customer data. Google has indicated that users of their services may also have been targeted in attempts to acquire passwords to their services in order to externally compromise their customers' data.

If you use IE6 then your security is at risk too. If you're not sure which version you are using, open Internet Explorer and in the toolbar go to Help → About Internet Explorer where you will be shown which version is installed on your machine.

What can you do to protect yourself?

Although France, Germany and Australia advised users to at least temporarily switch browsers until Microsoft released a fix, this was probably a bit of an over-reaction as all major browsers have flaws, and have been actively targeted with exploits. However it is true that IE is exploited more than any other browser and, so, if you are an IE devotee and haven't upgraded to IE8 yet, which goes some way to address the security issues of previous versions, now would be the time. Microsoft has now officially ceased to support IE6.

As programmers compete with one another to make faster, more stable, secure and intuitive browsers there are thankfully great alternatives. For those IE users who are looking for something visually familiar there is Firefox. Safari, traditionally the Mac browser, is now available for PCs too. At PC Man we prefer Google Chrome for a number of reasons; not only is it more secure, it is much faster and more stable even with multiple tabs open, loads pages in a flash, doesn't stutter when streaming video content and has the added bonus of the address bar also being the Google search function.

How strong is your password?

Now you've sorted out which browser you will be using, let's take a look at your password. You may be surprised to know that according to a study of 32 million people by Imperva last year, the most common password was '123456', followed by '12345' '123456789' and 'Password', in that order. 'iloveyou' came in at no. 5. Not only that, but most users tend to use the same passwords for all or most of their work and personal email and bank accounts. Come on people!!! What are you thinking???

Only 0.2% of users had what would be considered a strong password of eight or more characters that contains a mixture of special characters, numbers and both lower and upper case letters, says the study. Review your passwords and make changes where necessary otherwise you are literally handing hackers the key to your online door.

Is your computer secure?

So now you've taken care of how you access the online world, how do you protect how the online world accesses you? By using a professional Anti-virus/Anti-spyware product. Unfortunately a lot of the products on the market, whilst offering protection, take up a huge amount of your system resource causing your machine to run slowly and interfering with many of your processes. After much trialling and research PC Man has found the solution, an award winning product that operates discreetly but efficiently in the background and does not affect your computer's performance.

We love it so much that we are now offering it free to our members as part of our membership package along with 1gb secure online data storage, one complimentary email/telephone support query per month, 10% discount on our services and access to the soon to be available members area of our website packed with useful info, downloads, tips and tricks. If you are a Norton or McAfee user get in touch and see how your security and system performance can be improved.