Wednesday, January 18, 2006
Workshop offers weapons to battle Internet crimes
Ensnaring the unwary: Users can protect themselves against pornography and theft
By Bob Mims
The Salt Lake Tribune
Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff dangled a rusty old spring-loaded, jaw-style animal trap, set it and began to playfully probe it with a pencil.
“We can go on the Internet, thinking we’re safe . . . and we play around the edges a bit,” he told a crowd of 100 technology executives Tuesday. “We take our mouse and sort of click here, and there and then . . . .”
Suddenly, the trap snaps, splintering the pencil.
Shurtleff’s point: “The Internet is a dangerous place, and you can get caught. So follow the rules and learn how to use it safely.”
Just how dangerous a place cyberspace can be was echoed by others engaged in the fight against Internet crime who spoke to a “Take Back the Net” workshop at downtown Salt Lake City’s Grand America Hotel hosted by Americans for Technology Leadership.
Speakers said that the Internet has increasingly become a playground for crime, from counterfeit e-mail promoting investment scams or trying to trick the innocent out of personal financial information to high-jacked Web sites pushing pornography.
Jack Sunderlage, president and CEO of Internet filtering company ContentWatch and chairman of the Utah Information Technology Association, shared sobering statistics to emphasize the exploding Web-borne industry of pornography and its threat to adults and children alike.
• The average age of first Internet exposure to pornography is 11.
• One in five teenagers who regularly use the Internet have received at least one sexual solicitation.
• Pornography has become a $57 billion industry, producing more revenue nationally than professional football, baseball and basketball combined.
• Half of the Fortune 500 companies dealt with at least one porn access-related incident in the past year, and 20 percent of men and 13 percent of women admit accessing pornography at work.
• There were at least 233 million hosted pornographic domains on the Web in 2004, compared with 147 million two years prior.
Craig Spiezle, director of Microsoft’s technology care and safety group, stressed vigilance against increasingly sophisticated schemes to rob people of their identities and money.
“Any e-mail can be spoofed, or forged,” he said. “As soon as you click on that link, [the sender] can download spyware to your computer” that transmits back any personal information it can find.
Phishing schemes, where bogus but authentic-looking e-mails are sent providing a supposedly secure site to log on with passwords and other sensitive data, also claim the unwary.
Microsoft works continually with law enforcement, legislators and software and technology companies to try to stay one step ahead of Internet criminals, Spiezle said. However, it is up to individual computer users to make sure their e-mail filtering programs, spyware blockers and anti-virus programs are regularly updated.
Bill Ashworth, director of state government affairs for Yahoo!, praised such collaboration for producing Internet browser tool bars that incorporate the latest in e-mail and spyware protection.
Noting the efforts of Shurtleff and other state leaders in promoting and passing Internet-related legislation, Ashworth said such collaboration will be needed more often as cybercriminals launch increasingly complex and clever schemes in the future.
bmims@sltrib.com
Cybersecurity tips
* Install and keep virus software up to date, checking for upgrades at least once a week.
* Use a firewall program to monitor traffic to and from your computer and to protect it from hackers.
* Keep your software up to date, downloading the latest security patches as available.
* When in doubt, delete. Do not open e-mail or e-mail attachments from people you don’t know.
* Passwords are like toothbrushes: change them regularly, and never share them with someone else.
Source: Americans for Technology Leadership
http://www.sltrib.com/busines/ci_3412216
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