Editor,
In Friday's Daily Lobo, Manuelita Beck wrote an interesting column about spam e-mails and people getting suckered into scams.
She provides figures as to how much money financial institutions have lost because of these scams, and she discussed an interesting research project.
However, Beck completely failed to offer any advice about how people can avoid these scams. Creating awareness of these problems is important, but it is far more important to provide solutions.
Why complain about something if you're not going to try and help?
In the spirit of creating awareness of Internet scams and dangers, Beck should have also written about adware and spyware, which in their own right are as dangerous as the scams she mentioned, if not more so.
Spyware and adware are programs that can be downloaded inadvertently when connected to other programs such as "free" games. What these nasty critters can do range from monitoring Web pages you've visited to monitoring your keystrokes, meaning that whatever you type, even passwords and banking information, they can record.
The spyware then sends this information someplace else, where who knows what will be done with it.
The beauty and horror of these things is that they run in the background, so you never notice they're there. These programs steal system resources such as memory and bandwidth.
Have you ever wondered why your new, super computer is suddenly running slow after a few months? These programs are typically the culprits. In my opinion, I would say adware and spyware are more of a nuisance than e-mail scams, although sometimes the two go hand in hand.
How can you avoid such things? For the e-mail scams, as Beck failed to inform her readers, it is quite simple. If you don't recognize the sender of an e-mail, ignore it or, at the very least, don't open any files or links that are in it.
If it seems like the e-mail comes from a legitimate business, always check the Internet address it's telling you to go to. If there are extra numbers that look something like 169.343.34.34 for example, it is most likely a scam.
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If you're still in doubt, go to the company's legitimate Web site and get its e-mail address and forward what you have, asking if it is legitimate. Most large companies have special departments for fraud and will inform you about the legitimacy of the e-mail.
As for the spyware and adware, it is always good to have a newly updated virus protection program regardless.
There are also many free anti-spyware and adware programs as well. Two of the best programs available are Ad-Aware and Spybot. They're free and occasionally have updates that are also free. Run these at least once a week, and your system can remain relatively clean and safe.
You can protect yourself and live a little more securely by taking the necessary precautions. However, the best defense you can have is knowledge, so do your research and inform yourself on the dangers out there. Computers are only as painful as you allow them to be.
Emmanuel Flores
UNM student
