This blog complements my book, The Essential Guide to Home Computer Security, to help you keep your home computers and smartphones secure.

Thursday, 24 May 2012

Free Anti-virus for Mac

Now is the time to install anti-virus for Mac if you haven't already done so. With more widely occurring attacks on the Mac coming to light, the need for anti-virus on Mac OSX has risen substantially. Symantec have recently brought out a free option called iAntiVirus. It doesn't have the full capabilities of paid-for anti-virus but joins some other free Mac anti-virus tools such as ClamXav and Sophos Home Edition.

Wednesday, 9 May 2012

Cybercrooks bring their schemes to Tumblr and Pinterest

Cybercrooks bring their schemes to Tumblr and Pinterest: CNET reports: "Digital criminals are expanding their social-networking nefariousness beyond Facebook and Twitter to try to trick users into downloading malicious payloads."

Tuesday, 24 April 2012

Parental Controls on eReaders

Here's a useful little article about parental controls (or the lack of them) on the new wave of web enabled eReaders. I use K9 web protection on PCs and this is now available for iPads, and is in the works for Android, so will cover at least some eReaders.

Friday, 20 April 2012

A Trojan by SMS

It was pretty obvious that the security landscape for smartphones would gradually resemble that of PCs and here is more evidence. The rise of RATs, or Remote Access Trojans. One of the attackers most effective weapons and, in this report, delivered over SMS!
Remote access tools a growing threat to smartphones - a Trojan by SMS

Monday, 5 March 2012

Is this the youngest hacker ever?

Yesterday, my 4 year old daughter cracked my wife's PIN on the Wii fit. She turned around from the screen to look at us and said 'mummy, is your number XXXX?' I could see from the display that she was 'in'. It was absolutely hilarious and I was in stitches!