Let’s talk for a moment about your browsing and email habits.
These two areas are where most of us have gotten a bad virus, or given out information we should not have.
Browsers
- are a wonderful tool to get us the web content that we want. They do not discern what you are viewing though. By using an ad blocker, this will allow you to view most web pages without having to contend with ads that block our content, or show us previously viewed items we may have put into an online shopping cart. More importantly they can block malicious code that can be injected into your system.
- Clicking on ads has become a virtual chore. When you perform a search from your popular search engine, you will not be able to detect an ad vs a legitimate link unless you take a few moments to check where the link is going to take you, or if it has a “ad” symbol next to the search results’ links.
- By clicking on an ad, you may be redirected to a malicious website, or have a cookie tracker file added to your system so you will become a target in a future hack attempt.
Emails
- are even worse. By clicking on an email, depending on your system settings, can unintentionally run malicious code on your computer without you knowing.
- Emails and their Attachments can look normal, and look like they have been sent by a coworker, or safe sender, but may still have malware injected into their attachment.
A Good Rule of Thumb, if you have received an email and it regards a money transfer in any regard, follow up with the sender (either with a reply email, or a phone call) to verify the authenticity of the original message, to prevent fraud or discover an impostor in your communication email chain.
*Changing your habits by simply taking an added 2 seconds before clicking on a link or an attachment in an email may save your company thousands of dollars in a ransomware attack.
If you think you have received a phishing email, or you have accidentally clicked on a link and a non-closable pop up is blocking you from getting back to work, please contact us at
[email protected] or call us at 310.695.1742.
