Beware Of Viral Inviters
March 20th, 2009 by ComputerBob
By now, nearly every savvy computer user knows that Windows provides a virtual playground (pun intended) for a variety of viruses and malware, while Linux is a “party pooper” to those activities.
But there are security threats that can affect both Windows and Linux users, because they don’t rely on security vulnerabilities in the operating systems themselves — they rely on the naiveté of computer users.
In fact, many computer security experts agree that the biggest threat to computer security is computer users themselves.
As an example, our friends at the WindowsSecrets newsletter report that “Several firms have recently sprung up that provide tools to copy e-mail and social-network contact lists from Outlook, Gmail, Hotmail, AOL, MySpace, Friendster, and other sites.”
“Web site operators who lure unsuspecting users into sharing their address lists can then send invitations to all the contacts in order to swipe even more private info.”
Be careful out there.
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Tags:
Cybercrime, Linux, Security, Windows