Screwing With the System - The Most Dangerous Computer Viruses Ever

The worldwide web is actually very much like our world in several aspects, it's just a little weirder at times. Like the everyday waking world, there are a of ways to have fun, to socialize, to engage in artistic endeavors or to establish a good business strategy among other things. And as much as there are a lot of good things about the web, there are also a lot of dangers to look out for. Hackers (or crackers for that matter) are like thieves and trespassers that use dexterity and careful planning to steal information or money. Cyber-stalkers are much like real life stalkers except that they have the advantage of anonymity and fading into the shadows much thanks to all the advantages the Internet offers. And then much like in the real world, we or our computers can and do get sick-from threats like computer viruses.

What makes these viruses unique from the vicious strains found in nature is that they are man-made. And instead of killing and crippling individual people, they have the capacity to cripple and kill entire industries, organizations and services. Many call the creators of these deadly strains criminals although some have created cult fanbases for themselves, which believe them to be modern day heroes. Whatever you may think of them, here is a list of the most deadly viruses that have been released to damage sectors of society, as a form of protest, or even as some say, by accident:

Melissa Virus: The Melissa virus was one of the most dangerous viruses and one of the fastest spreading ones in recent memory. It infected about 20% of computers worldwide, including the networks of Microsoft, Intel and other companies that relied on MS Outlook to be their default email client. Countless email servers around the world were forced to shut down just to halt the spread of this virus. The email came with an MS Word attachment that, when opened emailed itself to the first 50 people in your contact list. It also overwrote the document files in the infected computer with quotes from the famous TV show, 'The Simpsons'.

Blaster: This was a virulent strain of malware that spread itself not through email but through the vulnerability of both the Windows 2000 and Windows XP machines. Once a computer was infected, it displayed a message box indicating that the system would shut down in a couple of minutes. Discovered in the code was a message to Microsoft owner, Bill Gates saying: "Billy Gates, why do you make this possible? Stop making money, and fix your software!"

MyDoom: When the list of very damaging mass-mailing viruses is compiled, MyDoom will definitely be on the list. Though primarily written to spread through email, its growth became almost impossible to check with the emergence of the P2P software KaZaA. The MyDoom virus slowed down Internet access by 10% and caused some website access to be reduced by 50%. It was said that during its heyday, one it ten email messages sent contained the virus.

These are just a few of the many notorious viruses that have had computer owners and companies shaking their heads and pulling their hairs out in frustration. If you want more of the best instances of cyber-terrorism just visit: http://crunkish.com/top-ten-worst-computer-viruses/ .

Why I Use an Anonymous Web Proxy Service

I've been using an anonymous web proxy service for some time now and I don't think I would ever go back to ordinary surfing. It's not that I am some sort of shadowy cyber criminal with some secret online life, no I pretty much surf the same web sites as everyone else, I certainly don't go to illegal or criminal sites.

If you want to know why, it's simply because I value my privacy and I know what data is stored in the average organisation and how it is protected. Take your ISP for example, they logs pretty much everything that passes through them - every single request, every web page, every email and even every image is logged. The vast majority of this traffic is in cleartext so the majority of it is instantly readable and can be matched to your address.

It's amazing what these logs can tell about people you can build up a lot of information about someone from what they do on the web. So do you know who has access to these logs at your ISP, what controls are in place, how is this information stored ?

If you don't know your not alone but after 25 years working in IT, I'll pretty much bet you wouldn't like to know the answer anyway. This is the problem with much internet communication, it's so completely open - occasionally you'll obviously use a secure site to type in your credit card details. Yet up to the point all your information is flying across the internet ether completely unprotected and accessible to anyone who has the will and the knowledge to intercept it.

Believe me there are plenty of people who do have an interest in your information

Why do you think a European Directive was recently passed - Directive on Mandatory Retention of Communications Traffic Data. It's a bit of a mouthful but what it's actually doing is forcing your ISP to keep a record of every email sent, every internet session and web site visited for two years. So think back at every web site you've ever visited for the last two years and it's on record and can be matched to your own little electronic profile.

How does that make you feel?

Even if you've done nothing wrong it's bound to make you feel a little uneasy after all why do Governments want all this information about us? If you want to feel a little more uneasy, many Governments are looking at the UK Governments idea who are going to store all this information in a central database accessible to certain organisations. Fear not US citizens you'll not be left out - the FBI are pushing hard for similar data retention facilities.

Storing data is dangerous

If you store data you have to be prepared to take good care of it. All the privacy erosion concerns aside, the more personal data is stored about us, the more people will have access to it. How thorough do you think is the vetting procedure for an ISP Technical engineer ? Who potentially has access to huge amounts of this data. Even if implicitly trust our govenrments with this tremendous invasion of our privacy - fraudsters, identity thieves and others can create mayhem with this sort of information. These logs are gold dust to anyone trying to steal our identity for example - they can match up users, with web sites, pick up password and all sorts of personal information. Even though a small part of this information is encrypted when you're actually using a secure web site (with the padlock below) there's plenty of other personal information available to compromise your usernames, password etc.

An identity thief can pick up huge amounts of data about the average person all ready, an hour or two picking up all your web traffic and they'll also have where you bank, what web sites you visit and logon to and a whole heap more. This unfortunately is the tip of the iceberg and I suspect you'll see many, many people protecting their privacy online soon from identity thieves, hackers and even our friendly snooping governments.

Everything I do online is private, I use a fast professional service that anonymises my connection and encrypts all the data. My web logs sit next to yours in a server room at my ISP however mine are all completely encrypted and unreadable by anyone, whereas yours are in clear text.

One thing I should warn people about is the use of free anonymous web proxy services which you see all over the web. Be very, very careful about these and think why are they supplying a very expensive and resource hungry service for free? Remember also that by using one of these free proxies you are redirecting your traffic via this server whose owner can capture and log your data himself. Many of these are owned and run by Eastern European Hacking groups as an easy way to gain peoples traffic, so be careful.

So if you don't want hackers, crackers, identity thieves or even governments snooping on what you do on the internet do as I do. I use the most secure and professional service to encrypt and protect my web activities - the excellent Identity Cloaker service - click here to read more about them - Protect your Privacy