Join us in making the Internet safer for your family, your banking and business
This blog is written to provide some valuable information on Internet Security. Top Gadgets needs to raise awareness of the potential for Internet fraud especially when we are travelling and have to rely on Internet cafes to maintain contact with family and friends and just as importantly to conduct personal banking transactions to take care of daily expenses.
Keystroke fraud is where an unsuspecting computer user, usually at an Internet cafe, has all their keystrokes recorded by a stealth program. There are many variants of this type of program. They are very difficult, if not impossible, to detect by the average user. This type of fraud amounts to billions of dollars per annum worldwide.
This issue has come to our attention as a result of feedback from and discussions with many people who have been victims of this type of increasing common electronic fraud.
Situation One
Larry used an Internet cafe in Asia to do some banking as well as check his Hotmail and Facebook accounts. While using the computer at this internet cafe his keystrokes where recorded and the criminals involved later attempted to withdraw a significant amount of money from his bank account. It was only the banks due diligence procedures for unusual transactions that allowed him to cancel this illegal withdrawal.
The criminals then changed the details including the password of his Hotmail and Facebook accounts.
All this was possible because he unwittingly used a computer that had a keystroke program installed that allowed for his private usernames and passwords to be captured.
Situation Two
The son of a friend of ours was in the US recently. He used an Internet cafe to conduct a number of online banking transactions; it was not until one week later that he realised over US $5,000 had been stolen from his bank account.
After contacting his bank and proving these transactions were fraudulent, he had to wait 12 weeks before the money was refunded.
This is the typical situation where once the fraud is identified the victim has to firstly prove that he is innocent, and then wait over an extended period for the bank to refund his money.
This is not the first time we at Top Gadgets have heard these types of stories. We have heard dozens of reports of this type of illegal keystroke activity happening all over the world. Listed below are just a few of the many stories posted on the Internet by other victims.
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/22550/beware_of_fraud_in_internet_cafes_when.html?cat=3
The solution
In recent times, a number of speciality products have been released onto the commercial market to prevent keystroke recording fraud from occurring. New to our product range is an IronKey USB Flash Drive (IronKey S200 Personal) that is 256-bit encrypted as well as having its own secure version of the popular Mozilla Firefox Web browser.
What this means is when you go to an Internet cafe to do your banking, check your email or Facebook accounts or any other account that requires you to log in, your username and password are protected and cannot be recorded by a keystroke program, as long as you use the secure version of the Web browser on the IronKey USB flash drive.
The bonus of these IronKey USB flash drives is that they also are password protected storage devices ranging from 1GB to 16GB in size. All your information is 256-bit encrypted and password protected. If anyone obtains your IronKey and tries to hack into it, after the default 10 incorrect password attempts, the IronKey will obliterate all data on the disk, rendering it and your precious information, unreadable and irretrievable.
The directors of Top Gadgets were so impressed by the IronKey technology that we all bought one each to access our banking and communicate with our suppliers and clients over the Internet. The high-tech 256-bit encryption technology, coupled with our bank’s encryption, makes it virtually impossible for someone to access private corporate information.
The IronKey is approved for use on the United States Department of Defence (DoD) networks, as IronKey flash drives meet or exceed all new DoD specifications for flash media, after they were banned in 2008 following a Worm attack which was traced to USB flash drives and removable media.
The technology was developed partly through a grant from a branch of the Department of Homeland Security that is tasked with advancing technology designed to protect the US. At a recent board of directors meeting and following a meeting with the people at IronKey, we made it company policy to use the IronKey for all interoffice and directors communication over the Internet. As we all know, the Internet has made business easier, but also has inherent risks. IronKey helps to control those risks.
The directors of Top Gadgets were so impressed by IronKey’s commitment to helping control corporate and personal risk, we enthusiastically endorse this innovative product without hesitation.
Beware of cheaper imitations, and those products that overpromise but can’t deliver. Visit at our website www.topgadgets.com.au for all the technical information on these state of the art 256-bit encrypted IronKey USB flash drives.
Happy and safe travelling and browsing.
Remo Krause
CEO/Director
Top Gadgets
www.topgadgets.com.au