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It might be tempting to go online without any third-party virus protection, and maybe just rely on, say, the built-in defences provided with Windows 11 (Microsoft Defender). It’s free and right there, after all. If you’ve got a Mac, you might even have heard that you really don’t need antivirus at all. After all, Apple’s security is tighter and its desktop OS is a much safer platform, isn’t it?
Well, to a point – but that particular Mac myth is a dangerous assumption to live by. In fact, some cybercriminals rely on the old chestnut that the Mac is so secure, you don’t need protection, and leverage it to their advantage. The truth is that in recent history, the number of threats being aimed at macOS has increased massively.
Indeed, the malware landscape is increasingly infested with dangerous threats no matter whether you’re online with a Mac, a Windows PC, or a mobile phone. And what’s more, you can expect malware attacks and methods to become much sneakier and more cleverly targeted this year.
As a recent ‘cybersecurity predictions’ report from Gen Digital makes clear, 2024 is going to be a year of more frequent and highly individualised attacks – with artificial intelligence helping to drive this activity. Malicious parties will use AI to develop more sophisticated tools and scams to better manipulate the unwary, often via social media.
In terms of taking precautions, to begin with, all the usual advice in terms of good security
practice and online behaviour applies. And the most important rule to live by is this simple nugget:
Think before you click.
When faced with any message, or social media post, that contains a link of some kind, or an
attachment, always ask yourself – do I need to click that link? Or do I need to open that attachment?
If you feel a strong temptation to click on whatever’s presented to you – if it seems like some hot piece
of gossip, or it’s a warning that something must be done urgently, or you’ll face dire
consequences – treat that as a red flag.
Cybercriminals will always try to get you to swiftly click on something without thinking too much about it, and then you’ve fallen into their trap and gone to their malicious website, or opened their pretend invoice that really contains a virus, before you know what’s happened.
What can you do to protect yourself?
As you’ve seen, given the range of threats – and growing complexity of scams, with the use of AI in particular – it’s really only sensible to have an antivirus and security suite from a trusted company to help defend yourself from would-be attackers.
Norton is such a brand and it offers a wide range of tools to provide online protection from malware and scams, and to help keep your personal data safe, to boot. In many ways, that personal data is key to exploiting people, because when criminals have details on any given individual, they can then tailor any scam to make it more enticing and realistic.
With that in mind, one of the most crucial elements that Norton provides – with its Norton 360 Advanced plan – is identity protection. This includes dark web monitoring – which involves keeping a watchful eye out for your personal information appearing on the dark web, if it’s been compromised – and Identity Restoration Support. The latter means that if you do happen to fall prey to identity theft – perhaps through no fault of your own, in the case of a data breach at a third-party – an Identity Restoration Specialist at Norton will guide you through what to do to resolve the incident, in a step-by-step fashion.
Norton 360 Advanced also offers a raft of monitoring solutions, including Social Media Monitoring¹, Credit Report monitoring², as well as Financial Monitoring to keep an even closer eye on your monetary matters. The latter alerts you if there are suspicious transactions on your credit cards or bank accounts, that might mean your identity has been compromised somehow. Identity theft is clearly something you need to guard carefully against, because as Norton reports, in 2021 alone it cost US citizens almost $270 million. If identity theft goes undetected, the damage caused to your life could potentially be immense.
Norton has your back
So again, the golden rule is: Think before you click. And further to that, the silver rule, as it were, is think twice if it seems like you’re being tempted into clicking something.
If, after taking a pause for thought, you come to the conclusion that something seems suspicious – or even just a little bit iffy – then take extra precautions. For example, carefully check the email address that a message came from, or the web link you’re being presented with – is the domain name slightly misspelled, perhaps? (That’s a common tactic employed to make a link look legitimate at a glance).
Be particularly careful on social media, because scams are rife here. (Norton has compiled a useful list of 13 common WhatsApp scams, if you want to see the kind of traps which are set for users). The future of malware attacks will involve highly engineered schemes, possibly crafted by AI that has generated posts or adverts – maybe even fake videos, from scratch, that look very realistic – all of which are designed to appeal specifically to you. (Perhaps based on data showing your browsing habits that has been collected by social media outlets, and subsequently compromised).
As well as helping you better protect your identity, Norton 360 Advanced helps maintain your privacy – and online anonymity – with its built-in Secure VPN. A VPN service allows for your data to be encrypted – scrambled, so it’s unreadable – when that data is sent online from your device, keeping it safe from the prying eyes of the likes of your Internet Service Provider (ISP) or other third-parties. A VPN also hides the IP address of your device and your real-life location (snoopers will see the location of the VPN server instead). So, as you can see, there are considerable benefits in terms of anonymity and privacy with Secure VPN.
On top of those features to maintain the security of your personal data and identity, and your online privacy, Norton 360 Advanced offers all the core abilities you’d expect from a security suite. That includes robust antivirus protection to keep malware at bay, a password manager to keep those important passwords more secure, as well as parental control to help keep your kids safe online.
Norton 360 Advanced boasts all of the above, including those all-important identity protection features, in a single one-stop-shop solution with coverage for up to 10 devices. Those can be Windows PCs or Mac, tablets or phones, and support for 10 devices is enough for the whole family (plus Norton throws in 200GB of cloud backup space as an additional perk). All this can be had for £34.99 for the first year of subscription, which is quite the bargain given the thoroughness of the protection being delivered by this suite.
Click here to subscribe to Norton 360 Advanced with Identity Protection for £34.99 for the first year
¹ Social Media Monitoring is not available on all social media platforms and the features differ between platforms, for details go to: Norton.com/smm. Does not include monitoring of chats or direct messages.
² Norton Credit Portal features provided by TransUnion International UK Limited. Accessible to +18 residents of UK, IOM & Channel Islands, after successful registration & verification. Terms apply.
Here’s why you must use antivirus these days
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