Internet Safety Survey - What is your biggest online safety concerns?

We would love to hear from you! Please see the survey on the right sidebar on our blog (http://blog.liviaweb.com) and let us know! Leave your Twitter name and we will be sure to give you a shout out in appreciation for your participation.

What are your biggest online safety concerns?

• Viruses/Malware
• Phishing Attacks
• Adult Material/Pornography
• Online Predators
• or Other

If you select Other concerns, please leave us a comment what keeps you awake at night with regard to Internet safety and security.

Thank you for your time and surf safe!!

Kid Tested, Tom's Guide Approved - Livia Web Protection is a top-10 software title for keeping kids safe on the Internet

Tom’s Guide has just released its top-10 software titles for keeping kids safe on the Internet in 2009: browsers, e-mail, games, activities, and content blockers. We are proud to announce that Livia Web Protection was included in this great list of resources as a top web filtering and security product to keep our children safe online.

According to Tom’s Kid Safety Guide – “Different families have different online needs, and while many companies have tried to market the “ultimate” online safety solution, there isn’t one easy answer to keep kids completely safe online. Nevertheless, most parents think they ought to take some Internet safety precautions. …Why are these products needed? Simply because relying on the tools built in to your operating system or browser is not enough.”

The Internet continues to evolve every day with more and more threats that families and children must be protected from. The Internet is a great resource for our children, but parents must be educated about the dangers that exist – from identity theft, the presence of sexual offenders online, to keeping our children’s eyes safe from adult content and pornography.

On Livia Web Protection – Tom’s Guide states that “This is perhaps one of the most “set it and forget” programs available for families today.” With Livia Web Protection, parents are able to easily select from pre-defined protection levels, once that level is set, updating of the database of Web sites is done automatically on a daily basis, eliminating the need for parents to do any updating to the software what-so-ever. If a parent chooses to block pornography and adult pages, access to all of these web sites is automatically blocked should a child accidently or purposely attempt to access adult content. Tom’s Guide concludes, “If you want to give a blanket level of protection against the dangers of the Internet, however, it (Livia Web Protection) may be the easiest option.”

October is the National Cyber Security Awareness Month, we find this recognition from Tom’s Guide an honor during such an important cause. To View the article in its entirety, please visit http://www.tomsguide.com/us/child-security-safety,review-1442.html or for more information on Livia Web Protection, please visit www.liviaweb.com.

Stay safe online and happy surfing!

Stay Safe Online - Choosing a STRONG password!

As we continue with National Cyber Security Awareness Month, Google has offered tips on one of the most important parts of keeping your identity safe with security – your passwords.

The company has offered 5 common problems and suggestions for making passwords stronger. Livia Web Protection woud like to thank Google for this great advice.

Problem 1: Re-using passwords across websites
With a constantly growing list of services that require a password (email, online banking, social networking, and shopping websites — just to name a few), it's no wonder that many people simply use the same password across a variety of accounts. This is risky: if someone figures out your password for one service, that person could potentially gain access to your private email, address information, and even your money.

Solution 1: Use unique passwords
It's a good idea to use unique passwords for your accounts, expecially important accounts like email and online banking. When you create a password for a site, you might think of a phrase you associate with the site and use an abbreviation or variation of that phrase as your password — just don't use the actual words of the site. If it's a long phrase, you can take the first letter of each word. To make this word or phrase more secure, try making some letters uppercase, and swap out some letters with numbers or symbols. As an example, the phrase for your banking website could be "How much money do I have?" and the password could be "#m$d1H4ve?" (Note: since we're using them here, please don't adopt any of the example passwords in this post for yourself.)

Problem 2: Using common passwords or words found in the dictionary
Common passwords include simple words or phrases like "password" or "letmein," keyboard patterns such as "qwerty" or "qazwsx," or sequential patterns such as "abcd1234." Using a simple password or any word you can find in the dictionary makes it easier for a would-be hijacker to gain access to your personal information.

Solution 2: Use a password with a mix of letters, numbers, and symbols
There are only 26^8 possible permutations for an 8-character password that uses just lowercase letters, while there are 94^8 possible permutations for an 8-character password that uses a combination of mixed-case letters, numbers, and symbols. That's over 6 quadrillion more possible variations for a mixed password, which makes it that much harder for anyone to guess or crack.

Problem 3: Using passwords based on personal data
We all share information about ourselves with our friends and coworkers. The names of your spouse, children, or pets aren't usually all that secret, so it doesn't make sense to use them as your passwords. You should also stay away from birth dates, phone numbers, or addresses.

Solution 3: Create a password that's hard for others to guess
Choose a combination of letters, numbers, or symbols to create a unique password that's unrelated to your personal information. Or, select a random word or phrase, and insert letters and numbers into the beginning, middle, and end to make it extra difficult to guess (such as "sPo0kyh@ll0w3En").

Problem 4: Writing down your password and storing it in an unsecured place
Some of us have enough online accounts that we may need to write our passwords down somewhere, at least until we've learned them well.

Solution 4: Keep your password reminders in a secret place that isn't easily visible
Don't leave notes with your passwords to various sites on your computer or desk. People who walk by can easily steal this information and use it to compromise your account. Also, if you decide to save your passwords in a file on your computer, create a unique name for the file so people don't know what's inside. Avoid naming the file "my passwords" or something else obvious.

Problem 5: Recalling your password
When choosing smart passwords like these, it can often be more difficult to remember your password when you try to sign in to a site you haven't visited in a while. To get around this problem, many websites will offer you the option to either send a password-reset link to your email address or answer a security question.

Solution 5: Make sure your password recovery options are up-to-date and secure
You should always make sure you have an up-to-date email address on file for each account you have, so that if you need to send a password reset email it goes to the right place.

surf smart - stay safe online! What other ways do you keep your passwords safe??

Supporting National Cyber Security Awareness Month

It’s October 1st! Today kicks off the Annual National Cyber Security Awareness Month to help increase awareness of the dangers that exist online and develop best practices to avoid being a victim of cybercrime.

Established by the National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA), a non-profit partnership of educational institutions, professional organizations, corporations and the Federal government. National Cyber Security Awareness Month (NCSAM), conducted every October since 2001, is a national public awareness campaign to encourage everyone to protect their computers and our nation’s critical cyber infrastructure.

Today’s evolving Web-based threats such as phishing attacks, spyware and identity theft are top concerns for businesses and consumers alike. By utilizing proper precautions such as multiple passwords, updated security patches, and software solutions - ex. web filtering, anti-virus, firewalls - users can build a strong defense against cyber crime. According to the NCSA, last year, National Cyber Security Awareness Month reached more than 29 million Americans through media, middle school and high school lesson plans, and partnerships with dozens of companies and associations. This year, that number should be even higher as awareness and education on cyber security continues.

The success of National Cyber Security Awareness Month rests everyone to engage in education and awareness activities. There are opportunities for everyone from home users to major corporations and government entities to get involved. To view ways that you can get involved with NCSAM, please visit for tips - http://bit.ly/TPgF9

To support National Cyber Security Awareness Month, Livia Web Protection provides a layer of protection that safeguards families from online dangers while helping parents manage how their children use the Internet. By utilizing web filtering and web security software, families are protecting themselves from the continual development of malicious web pages – To put this into perspective, Websense Security Labs identified a 233 percent growth in the number of malicious web sites discovered in the last six months and a 671 percent growth over the last year.

Do your part to support National Cyber Security Awareness Month… spread the word and surf safely!

The Internet Has Never Been More Dangerous - latest research from the APWG

Today, the Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG) released their Phishing Trends Report for the 1st Half of 2009. Consumers and small business should be aware of the newest web-based threats that are out there and growing.

According to the APWG, Rogue anti-malware is growing at an unprecedented rate. In the first quarter of 2009, more new strains of rogue anti-malware were created than in all of 2008. Between January and the end of June 2009, the number of such programs grew 585%.

The number of unique phishing websites detected by APWG during the first half of 2009 fluctuated by nearly 30,000 between February and June. June’s high for the half of 49,084 was still 12% lower than the all-time high for this data set of 55,643 in April, 2007.

Payment Services jumped into the top position of targeted industry sectors in Q1 2009, rising over Financial Services for the first time since APWG began tracking the proportions of phishing attacks directed at each industry sector. The proportion of phishing campaigns directed against the Payment Services sector continued increasing through Q2, up some 16% from quarter to quarter, while the Financial Services sector’s proportion dropped more than 10% during the same period.

Additional Highlights from the 1st Half ‘09 Phishing Activity Trends Report include:

• Unique phishing reports submitted to APWG recorded a high of 37,165 in May, just under 7% higher than last year’s high of 34,758 in October.
• Brand-domain pairs increased to a record 21,085 in June, up 92% from the beginning of 2009.
• The number of hijacked brands ascended to a high of 310 at the end of Q1.
• Banking trojan/password-stealing crimeware infections detected increased during more than 186% between Q4, 2008 and Q2, 2009.
• The total number of infected computers rose more than 66% between Q4 2008 and the end of the half, 2009 to 11,937,944, representing more than 54% of the total sample of scanned computers.
• Sweden moved ahead of the United States as the nation hosting the most phish websites at the half’s end.
• China’s IP space hosted the most websites harboring malevolent code from March through June.

As hackers and cybercriminals find new ways to attack, security software and education can be your best defense. Web security and web filtering solutions, like Livia Web Protection, protect against phishing websites by automatically blocking access to those sites if a link would be clicked. Also, make sure that your Anti-virus and Anti-malware definitions are up-to-date and working properly.

To view the full APWG report, please visit http://www.apwg.com/reports/apwg_report_h1_2009.pdf

The “Dirty” Web is getting dirtier - Websense releases "State of the Internet" report

Today, Websense released its biannual “State of the Internet” report, a deep dive into the most significant threats on the Internet during the first half of 2009.

The report finds that most threats to information security are leading to the Web -- either using the Internet as the attack vector, or simply the route through which stolen, confidential data is transmitted.

Key findings from the Websense report include:

• Websense Security Labs identified a 233 percent growth in the number of malicious sites in the last six months and a 671 percent growth over the last year.
  
• In the first half of 2009, 77 percent of Web sites with malicious code were legitimate sites that have been compromised. This high percentage was maintained over the past six months in part due to widespread attacks including Gumblar, Beladen and Nine Ball which aimed at compromising trusted Web properties with massive injection campaigns.
  
• Web 2.0 sites allowing user-generated content are a top target for cybercriminals and spammers. Websense Security Labs found that 95 percent of comments to blogs, chat rooms and message boards are spam or malicious.
  
• The “Dirty” Web is getting dirtier: 69 percent of all Web pages with content classified as objectionable (e.g. Sex, Adult Content, Gambling, Drugs) also had at least one malicious link. This is becoming even more pervasive, as 78 percent of new Web pages discovered in the first half of 2009 with objectionable content had at least one malicious link.
  
• Websense Security Labs found that 37 percent of malicious Web attacks included data-stealing code, demonstrating that attackers are after essential information and data.
  
• The Web continues to be the most popular vector for data-stealing attacks. In the second half of 2008 the Websense Security Labs found that 57 percent of data-stealing attacks are conducted over the Web.
  
• The convergence of blended Web and email threats continues to increase. Websense Security Labs reports that 85.6 percent of all unwanted emails in circulation during the first half of 2009 contained links to spam sites or malicious Web sites.
  
• In June alone, the total number of emails detected as containing viruses increased 600 percent over the previous month.

You may find the full report and a video summary of the findings at: http://www.websense.com/threatreport

Teach your children about the dangers of posting inappropriate content online

Social networking is a great way to stay in touch with friends and share information on yourself and what activities, such as vacations, sporting events, birthday, that you have been up. Unfortunately, social networking sites have also made it easier for children and teens to participate in dangerous online activities, such as posting inappropriate content to the web and cyberbullying.

According to a survey given by Common Sense Media, a non-profit organization, the time teens spend on the Internet has soared in recent years with 22 percent of teens checking social networking sites more than 10 times each day. With the popularity of Facebook, Twitter and Myspace, children and teens can communicate instantly, upload pictures of themselves and their friends, and post comments and updates. They can include relationship status, age, address, interests and more on social Web sites. Parents should set rules for their children on Internet usage and talk to them about the dangers of posting inappropriate pictures, comments and other personal data. Additionally, utilizing programs such as web filtering and web security software can allow parents to set time limits and/or block access to social media websites during certain times of the day.

Cyberbullying continues to rise, a Pew Internet survey found that nearly one-third of teens had experienced cyber bullying. Inappropriate online behavior can be common because many children and teens feels they can get away with it because they can be anonymous and feel safe in what they are posting. Parents need to be aware of these dangers and teach their children to talk to an adult if they feel they are being cyberbullied.

Proper education of online safety from Parents, coupled with technology solutions, can help keep children and teens safe online.