A Cyber Wake-up Call
Published: June 24th, 2010
By: Melissa Stagnaro

A cyber wake-up call

Until this week, I thought drive-bys were something that happened in the inner city. Spear phishing sounded like my nephew’s favorite pastime in the Florida Keys. Zeus was an ancient god, sitting high atop Mount Olympus.

I also thought that as long as I didn’t respond to any emails hawking cheap Viagra or male enhancement (as tempting as that is), and avoided opening suspect email attachments, that I’d be safe from harmful computer viruses.

Oh, how naive I was.

Little did I know how vulnerable we truly are to the evil doers of the world. Now I can’t close my eyes without visualizing evil Eastern European crime syndicates camped out inside my computer, plotting how to get their grimy little hands on all my personal information.

I know what you’re thinking: that sounds a little far fetched. I’ll admit, I’ve got an overactive imagination. But in this case, my description isn’t too far off. I mean, there are no Ukrainians actually crouched inside my computer monitor. But they might as well be, since malware like that Zeus virus I mentioned gives these cybercriminals access to your most sensitive financial information. And with that in hand, its only a matter of time before what was once yours, is now theirs.

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The Evening Sun

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