Susan, to try to give you a short answer, in the past this was not as important. When we had kids and malicious folks who created viruses to cause trouble because that was what they did. They were fairly easy to contain and catch but that all changed when organized crime moved online. No doubt the creators of software programs have not caught up with this either, but the hackers have sure learned then can exploit you via out of date Java script and most recently out of date Adobe. (pdf)
I am sure they are not the only ones, they exploit Windows, requiring Microsoft to constantly update their product and I am sure you are aware there are more.
To my knowledge, Secunia (PSI) is the first company to provide freeware software to help us combat this threat. Short of not going online, we do all we can to remain safe and the scenario is constantly changing and will continue to do so until law enforcement figures out how to police the web (world) and you can see the problems with that. Currently hot spots are the Ukraine, Africa, Brazil and certainly the USA has it fair share of online criminals. As a layperson I can only suggest you do all you can to educate yourself as to how to be safe online. Start with the links I posted, then use a good search engine like Google. If I ask Google
"How to be safe online" I get: 75,300,000 responses and the most popular are: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=How+to+be+safe+online&btnG=Google+Search&aq=f&oq=
"How to be secure online" returns 191,000,000 results:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=How+to+be+secure+online&btnG=Search
I could go on and on but it's all said online for you.
Thanks for your questions...Phil
I am sure they are not the only ones, they exploit Windows, requiring Microsoft to constantly update their product and I am sure you are aware there are more.
To my knowledge, Secunia (PSI) is the first company to provide freeware software to help us combat this threat. Short of not going online, we do all we can to remain safe and the scenario is constantly changing and will continue to do so until law enforcement figures out how to police the web (world) and you can see the problems with that. Currently hot spots are the Ukraine, Africa, Brazil and certainly the USA has it fair share of online criminals. As a layperson I can only suggest you do all you can to educate yourself as to how to be safe online. Start with the links I posted, then use a good search engine like Google. If I ask Google
"How to be safe online" I get: 75,300,000 responses and the most popular are: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=How+to+be+safe+online&btnG=Google+Search&aq=f&oq=
"How to be secure online" returns 191,000,000 results:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=How+to+be+secure+online&btnG=Search
I could go on and on but it's all said online for you.
Thanks for your questions...Phil