This week's poll: How secure is your online presence?

[muppet42]

Well, in the past weeks Sony's PlayStation Network fiasco (something which may have even affected other parts of their business) has become a serious talking point.

Anyone who had a PSN account has been told their details, which include username, password and billing details could and probably have been compromised. This has even lead to the distinct possibility that credit card details are in the hands of those who shouldn't have them with Sony themselves asking all PSN users to monitor their bank account movements.

So the question is - how do you all feel about your presence online?

What kind of precautions do you take when browsing or purchasing online in terms of passwords and such?
Do any of you go as far as encrypting your data using something like Truecrypt?
How has this latest tech disaster affected your opinion of online security?

Personally, I've become increasingly aware of my online passwords and such having changed many of the more sensitive ones and rotating them a lot more frequently than I used to. In terms of online transactions, I use Paypal wherever I can though obviously even that may well not be infallible.

One way to make sure of a certain form of protection when doing something sensitive on the interwebs is to make sure that in the address line that "http" is replaced with "https". This means secure browsing is active and in most cases, something like a padlock icon may be displayed in your browser window somewhere.

Anyway figured it could be a good discussion topic

 

[M21MFS]

I'm probably lucky, in that I don't have a PS3 so my details are safe.

PC runs AVG and like you, passwords are periodically changed. It does surprise me just how severley PSN has been compromised. My cousin is an ethical hacker by trade, testing websites/servers and the likes for security and vulnerabilities. Even he seems shocked at just how easily the service has been brought tumbling down. And, perhaps ironically, he is a PSN member and so it's quite possible his info, like millions of others, is in the hands of someone who shouldn't have it.

 

[mrcinquecento]

i'm a psn member, but they dont have my card details, so all that can really have been stolen is my email address

i have different passwords for everything and run off different accounts for secure things from my day to day stuff

 

[Gregry254]

My PC has Comodo firewall, AVG antivirus and malware bytes on it that is run regularly.
My router also has a firewall built it . . . so I should be pretty safe.
None the less, any "sensitive" documents I have are kept on an external drive and turned off unless I am accessing them

 

[Andi9386]

All our computors run McAfee Anti Virus with McAfee Site advisor, which tells us if somone's trying to connect to our network.
As for the PS3 thing... I have a PS3 but it's not online i.e I don't have acess to PSN, so I'm not to worried.

 

[clock34]

dont have any virus protection and never have, only had avg for a very short while and when it kept flagging this site i sacked it off.

 

[muppet42]

The inbuilt MS stuff like Defender can do an okay job at protecting you so long as you don't go into sites that are obviously going to cause issues - though that can be sometimes harder than it sounds.

Personally, I've got the firewall on my router plus Avast for the anti-virus and Malware Bytes to run alongside. But if you keep you're PC updated and even have a decent browser with the security alerts switched on, that can help.

Used to McAfee when I first got this very PC in '05, but when the free ran out, I got AVG. Then I switched to Avast when it looked like AVG was ceasing to be free. Not had any problems in that respect since, all my PC issues are probably down to the combo of an iffy PSU and the sheer age of the machine

The PSN thing though did highlight it for me in a rather acute manner. The only reason my card details were on there was due to the DLC I get and the odd game I've downloaded like MK2 and Tekken 5. Hasn't been any dodgy movements on my account thankfully, but still changing my details when we're eventually allowed to log back in. This is apparently slated towards the end of the month now

 

[lkc]

I'm quite lucky in that work insists our home pcs are as protected as the work ones therefore I have Sophos installed through their licence. It's about the only decent perk we get though. I also run Malwarebytes and have a firewall installed but don't ask me which I routinely use the internet for most financial things and so far have been lucky not to have had any problems - I should maybe change my passwords more often though

 

[Venters]

Linux on every pc on my network and a 360. So yeah im pretty safe.

 

[imported_richard33dees]

All our home pc's run Kaspersky Internet Security 2011 thanks to Barclays bank, Rapport password protection thanks to Alliance & Leicester I also have lavasoft Ad-Aware which is run reguraly and the d-link router has an inbuilt firewall. Notsure if the pc's are running kasperky or windows firewall tho.

Funnily enough, just had a call from windows to say there were issues with our internet security. With a Nigerian/African accent I told him we ran Apple OSX an he hung up instantly lmfao

 

[Andi9386]

We use Rapport with RBS Rich

 

[ycming]

Avg easy!!!

 

[lkc]

I'm quite lucky in that work insists our home pcs are as protected as the work ones therefore I have Sophos installed through their licence. It's about the only decent perk we get though. I also run Malwarebytes and have a firewall installed but don't ask me which I routinely use the internet for most financial things and so far have been lucky not to have had any problems - I should maybe change my passwords more often though

Turns out I shouldn't trust work to look after the security of any pc I use. Managed to infect a work pc with the Galileo system cleaner virus this morning and it's now having to be taken away to be rebuilt. No idea where it came from but I'm typing this on a pc I don't give a toss about just in case it came from here ;p

ETA: just heard back from IT and apparently they've got several machines from all around campus affected by this virus. It's not being picked up by Sophos and they've no idea where it's coming from. Sounds like it could be in the news soon

 

[steve119]

Richard, there is a lot of nigerians doing the rounds of 'your pc is running slow, give me your credit card details and we will clean it for you' routine

A simple answer of I work for microsoft/ am a PC engineer and how do you know my PC is going slow gets them off the phone pretttty quickly!! lol