Perhaps it is just a coincidence, but I’ve had a couple of people that I know who have had their email accounts hacked recently. Given all of the personal information we send and receive in email messages, that can be a traumatic experience. One victim wondered if she should take a scorched earth policy, and move completely to a new email account. That’s normally not necessary. If you still have access to your account, you can take some steps to secure it, and keep the slimy criminal out.
If it seems like we’ve been focusing on security lately, it’s because we have been. After we got hacked a few weeks ago, we took extra steps to lock down the site. From plugging the initial vulnerability and removing the intrusion, to running scanners to make sure the site was clean, to installing a WordPress plugin to notify us if any file on the site is changed, to turning on two-factor authentication in Gmail so site passwords couldn’t be comprised via email, we’ve been extra-cautious. Perhaps no site is secure when faced with a determined hacker, but you can ever be too safe. One more tool that you can use on your own site, or to check the malware status and history of other sites, is Google’s Safe Browsing Diagnostic Tool.
Editor’s note: Today, 40Tech is pleased to present you with a guest post from Derek Zhuang, who takes a look at McAfee AntiVirus Plus. I haven’t used a McAfee product for years, so I was interested to hear if it had changed from what I remember. I know that some of you uber tech geeks out there aren’t McAfee and Norton fans. We keep an open mind here at 40Tech, though, so we were interested to see what someone had to say about the current incarnation of McAfee’s product. — Evan Kline
The spanking new McAfee AntiVirus Plus 2011 is an upgraded version of the 2010 McAfee VirusScan Plus. There is, of course, more than just the cursory name change. The McAfee AntiVirus Plus 2011 comes with a number of extra protection features and a fresh interface, which makes the streamlining of complex, virus-protection tools easy.
Have you ever worried that your email account was hacked? I had a scare recently that turned out to be unfounded, but it got me looking into ways to further secure my Gmail account. I had heard of Gmail’s two-factor authentication before, but had only dabbled in it. I now have two-factor authentication activated on both of my accounts, and it is pretty unobtrusive, and adds significant security to my account.
Last week, we covered two tools to help you scan your website for malware. Another method to determine if your site has been hacked is to look at changes in your server files themselves. That, though, can be time consuming if you do it manually. If you use WordPress (the self-hosted variety), and you want to use an automated tool that detects changes to files, take File Monitor Plus for a spin.
