For so long, when you heard about hackers or virus creators, you’d hear about the lone teenager or young adult who’d done it. But now online crime is being commited more by organized crime.

What this means is that more and more the goal is financial gain rather than bragging rights. It’s beyond phishing or hacking your computer. The risks are becoming greater and it’s more important to protect your computer and your personal information. This also means that attacks are becoming more sophisticated.

I discussed yesterday the steps you need to take to protect your home computer - firewall, antivirus and antispyware. In addition, you also need to know how to spot potential problems.

One of my big recommendations is to use Mozilla (downloadable as a part of Google Pack, link beneath the navigation on the left) rather than Internet Explorer. If you just prefer IE that much, at least consider turning off ActiveX, which is one of the biggest risks when you’re visiting sites. It may mean some slight annoyances on some sites, but it improves your security.

To turn off ActiveX, open Internet Explorer, go to the Tools menu and open Internet Options. Click on the Security tab and go to Custom Levels. Disable the various ActiveX controls (you will see several). If you need to turn ActiveX back on for any reason (and there are legitimate uses), go back and turn it on, switching it back off when you’re done. Don’t switch to prompt unless you want to get prompted a lot of the time on Microsoft’s sites. It can be quite frustrating.

The danger with ActiveX is that it can be used to install programs without your knowledge. These are called drive-by installs. I don’t know about you, but I can’t think of any good reason to let someone install something on my computer without asking me first.

As cybercrime becomes more advanced, you need to be more careful about protecting yourself, your family, your computer and your information.

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