How to Protect Your Computer from Keyloggers

Keyloggers have been a major problem today as it does not require any prior knowledge of computers to use it. So hackers mainly use keyloggers to steal your passwords, credit card numbers and other confidential data. Below are some methods through which you can protect your computer from keyloggers:

 

Use a Good Antivirus

This is the first and basic step that you need to take in order to protect your computer from keyloggers. Use a Good antivirus such as Kaspersky, Norton or Mcafee and update it regularly.

 

Use a Good Antispyware

Since keyloggers are basically spywares, if you are a frequent user of Internet then you could be exposed to thousands of keyloggers and spywares. So you should use a good antispyware such as NoAdware.

 

Antilogger can be Handy

Antiloggers are programs that detect the presence of keyloggers on a given computer. Over past few years, I have tested a lot of anti-logging programs and have found Zemana Antilogger as the best antilogger.

Zemana

Normally a keylogger can be easily detected by a Good Antivirus program, but hackers use some methods such as hexing, binding, crypting and similar techniques to make it harder to be detected by antivirus programs. In this case Zemana Antilogger comes handy as the program is specially developed to protect your system against harmful keyloggers.

 

Online Scanning

When ever you receive a suspicious file, you scan it with online scanners such as Multi engine antivirus scanner which scans your file with 24 antivirus engines and reports it back to you if the file is recognized as a virus or spyware. This ensures that none of the malicious programs can escape from being detected as there are 24 different antivirus engines are involved in the scanning process.

 

Sandboxie

Sandboxie is another great program to help you protect your computer against harmful keyloggers and spywares. Sandboxie runs your computer in an isolated space which prevents your program from making permanent changes to other programs in your computer.

When ever you receive a file that looks suspicious, just run the program with Sandboxie so even if it is a keylogger or any other virus it will not make permanent changes to your computer system.

To run a program in Sandboxie follow the steps as mentioned below:
1. Open sandboxie and click on sandbox menu on the top
2. Now goto Default sandbox
3. Then click on run any program
4. Now select the file you wish to run in sandboxie and click open

 

Keyscrambler

Keyscrambler is one of the best protection against keyloggers that you can have, Keyscrambler is a small program which encrypts your typed keystrokes so even if the victim has installed a keylogger on your system, he or she will get encrypted keys. Keyscrambler currently supports Firefox, Internet explorer and other applications, however its premium version supports more than 160 applications.

Hope you liked my post! Pass the comments.

This is a guest post by Rafay baloch who is an 18 year Computer engineering student, Ethical hacker, Tech blogger and an Internet marketer, He blogs at his blog Learn How to Hack and he is the writer of the book “A Beginners Guide To Ethical Hacking“

10 Tips to Avoid Getting Adware

Adware, malware, spyware and viruses can bring your system to its knees. They are detrimental, lowering the performance of your computer. You might need to replace data. You might lose unique files. Keep the nasties away from your computer using these ten simple tips.

1. Use Firefox: Internet Explorer is the most popular browser on the market, controlling over 50% of the market share. The virus and adware creators specifically look for exploitable vulnerabilities within IE because they know that they will receive the best return on investment. Your switch to Firefox prevents some adware from infecting your machine.

2. Scan your PC once a week: Sometimes adware programmers take a sneaky approach. They will set up their programs to run quietly in the background to spy upon your activities. This once a week scan is necessary to remove any of those sneaky bugs.

3. Download from known sites: New sites for installing adware are popping up all the time. If you find something that you want to download, make sure that it is from a known site. A company like Amazon will not steer you wrong, but Bob’s House of Wares might be a little less trustable. If you are not sure whether you can trust a site, perform a quick search.

4. Install Adaware: Ad-Aware is the most popular free adware removal program on the market. It detects, quarantines and removes adware. It searches for other programs which may have been installed, highlighting them in an easy to use interface. This program does not have an anti-virus attached.

5. Do not click on unsolicited email: You are constantly receiving offers to increase this or improve that through unsolicited email. Your curiosity may be killing you, but don’t click on these emails. They accept your click as permission to install adware, spyware and malware on your PC.

6. Install Antivirus software: Installing two programs for virus and adware protection is a smart idea. It caters to the strengths of each program, increasing the overall strength of your antiadware and antiviral campaign. Some of the best antivirus software is free, providing real time protection. Programs to look at would be Avast Antivir and AVG.

7. Don’t install toolbars: Even some reputable sites install custom toolbars. They slow your system down and collect information about your surfing habits. While a toolbar might offer some perks, it may also diminish your experience by dragging your system to a halt. Toolbars from less reputable places install adware and sometimes infect your system outright.

8. Look at your task manager: If anything seems out of place with your computer, take a look at your task manager. This tells you about all of the programs and processes which are running on your computer. Examine the processes tab for anything which you don’t immediately recognize. Perform a web search for unfamiliar processes.

9. Do not click on popups: Clicking on a popup usually spells certain doom for your computer. It opens the door for the viruses and adware that want to infect your machine, telling these malicious applications to make themselves at home. Stay away from those constantly advertised screensavers and icons.

10. Trust your gut: If you don’t feel right about a site, don’t go there. If you are receiving warnings from the antivirus and antiadware programs which you’ve installed, don’t go there. If you don’t like the layout of a site, don’t go there. Trust your instincts about sites.

With proper vigilance, you can keep aggravating adware, spyware and malware from your machine. Trust your instincts. Install Ad-Aware and an antivirus program. Play it safe. The care you spend in preventing adware from infecting your machine can save money and time.

This article was added by James Adams who is currently a writer and analyst at a supplier of printer cartridges and franking machine supplies. Much of his writing is about using advertising and productivity to help growth.

4 Ways to Identify Safe Websites on the Internet

On the whole Internet, there are approximately more than 150 million active websites up and running. As a result, it often becomes a real challenge for the users to identify safe websites that are trustworthy and reputed. Have you ever wondered to know the reputation of a website before placing the order? Need to know whether a given website is child safe? Well, here are some of the ways to identify safe websites on the Web.

1. WOT or Web Of Trust (www.mywot.com):

WOT is a great place to test the reputation of your favorite website. WOT gives real-time ratings for every website based on the feedback that it gets from millions of trustworthy users across the globe and trusted sources, such as phishing and malware blacklists. Each domain name is evaluated based on this data and ratings are applied to them accordingly. A snapshot of WOT ratings for gohacking.com is shown below:

As shown in the above snapshot, the reputation of each website is shown in terms of 4 components where green means excellent, yellow warns users to be cautious and red indicates potential danger.

Trustworthiness signifies the overall safety of the website. A poor rating may indicate that the site is associated with threats like Internet scams, phishing, identity theft risks and malware. For more information on phishing, you may refer my other post on how to identify and avoid phishing scams.

Vendor reliability tells you whether a given site is safe for carrying out buy and sell transactions with it. An excellent rating indicates superior customer satisfaction while a poor rating indicates possible scam or bad shopping experience.

Privacy indicates about “to what extent the site respects the privacy of it’s users and protects their personal identity and data”.

Child Safety indicates whether the content of a given site is appropriate for children. Site contents like sexual material, nudity and vulgarity will have a poor Child Safety rating.

In most cases, the WOT ratings are found to be highly accurate. To check the reputation of any given website, just visit www.mywot.com type-in the address of your favorite website and click on “Check now”. This tool alone can tell you a lot about the reputation and safety level of a website. However, in addition to this, I am giving you another 3 handy tools to identify safe websites on the Web.

2. McCafee SiteAdvisor:

McCafee SiteAdvisor is a free tool that is available as a browser add-on. It adds safety ratings to your browser and search engine results. You can download it from www.siteadvisor.com.

3. StopBadware:

Using this tool, you can check whether a given site is said to have involved in malware activity in the past. To check this, go to http://www.stopbadware.org/home/reportsearch and enter the URL or domain name of a website and click on “Search Clearinghouse ”. If the search does not return any result, that means the site was never involved in any of the malware activity in the past.

4. Google Pagerank:

Google PageRank is another great tool to check the reputation and popularity of a website. The PageRank tool rates every webpage on a scale of 1 to 10 which indicates Google’s view of importance of the page. If a given website has a PageRank of less than 3, then it is said to be less popular among the other sites on the Internet.

However, PageRank will only tell you how much popular a given website is and has nothing to do with the safety level of a website. So, this tool alone cannot be used to evaluate a website’s safety and other factors.

PageRank feature is available as a part of Google Toolbar. You can install Google Toolbar from http://www.google.com/intl/en_uk/toolbar/ie/index.html.

Zemana Antilogger: Download Link with One Year Free License

Submitted by Srikanth on Friday, 29 July 2011

As announced earlier, I am posting the download link and license key for the Zemana Antilogger software. The license is valid for one full year right from the day of activation. This version of the software that you’re about to download now is specially designed for our readers and contains the logo of GoHacking.com.

If you’re unaware of what exactly Zemana Antilogger is, then please ready my previous post that contains the required details. You can download this program from the following link:

Zemana Antilogger Download

License Key

GOHACKING-ZAL-11

Please Note

You will have to activate your copy of Zemana antilogger within 2nd of Aug 2011, after which the license key will become invalid for usage. Once you activate within the specified date, you can use this product for one full year, free of cost.

This program is fully compatible with Windows XP (SP2 or higher), Windows Vista (32bit & 64bit) and Windows 7 (32bit & 64bit). I hope you all like this offer from GoHacking.com