individual machines are more and more often being taken over and used to send spam, for distributed denial of service attacks, and other malicious or illicit purposes (and spammers have also been reading people's address books to find other victims, hence the problem with spam into mailboxes of this list's users). also, individual machines are interesting for stealing credit card information, and other information usable for various types of scams. credit card theft has really gotten ridiculous, according to cryptogram there is actually a glut of stolen credit card information on the market, leading to the odd situation where most stolen credit card information isn't used! people are apparently selling huge list of credit card information, so huge that even large scammers don't get around to using all of the information. it's a strange time when credit cards are more secure because so much information is stolen that any one account is unlikely to be exploited.
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: ------- > I also don't know where to look to get basic information about what I (being just an > individual user with no commercial stuff going on on my machine) need to do to > "protect" my machine. I would have assumed that no one would be interested in me, > but I do have a cable modem and so, in one sense, am online all the time. I had > thought that the OS's firewall was enough. Am I wrong? --------- -- G-List is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... Small Dog Electronics http://www.smalldog.com | Refurbished Drives | -- We have Apple Refurbished Monitors in stock! | & CDRWs on Sale! | Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> G-List list info: <http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml> --> AOL users, remove "mailto:"; Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/g-list%40mail.maclaunch.com/> Using a Mac? Free email & more at Applelinks! http://www.applelinks.com
