Some simple things to remember to keep your PC as safe and secure as possible. When you first boot the system or log on and BEFORE starting your email program: - Run Windows Update (especially if you turn your computer off at night)
- Run all your security program updates (Antivirus, firewall, anti-spyware, etc.)
- Reboot your system to make sure all the updates are installed completely and running properly
On the second Tuesday of every month - Patch Tuesday - run Windows Update to download and install the latest patches from Microsoft. These updates usually include security and/or bug fixes for both Windows and Office. If you use Outlook or some other calendar software you can set a reminder to run Windows Update on Patch Tuesday. This can be especially useful if, like many users, your system is turned off at night and unable to download the updates at the default Automatic Update setting of 3 AM. If you use Outlook as your email program then hover your mouse over any links that appear in an email to verify that they actually go to where they appear to from the visible text in the email. A favorite phisihing tactic is to make a link appear valid and actually redirect to somewhere else. For example, what you see in the email may read http://www.paypal.com/security/ but in reality links to http://stealyourinfo.com using simple HTML coding.
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