New family PC risk: Web sites!

As if family computer use wasn't enough of a minefield already, two new risks have recently emerged - ones that kids can easily encounter. This week we'll look at the first one: Web sites! (Next week: multiplayer games.)

These are Web sites that put malicious code or spyware on the PCs of average surfers who simply click to them. At least one professional techie was telling his family late last week simply not to use the Web unless they absolutely had to, the Washington Post reported, referring to the "world wide minefield" some malicious hackers in Russia had temporarily turned the Web into. The good news is two-fold: 1) the server the hackers were operating was shut down, and 2) their exploit alerted a whole lot of us to a new PC security risk: hijacked Web sites that can send our computers code that allows its writers to take control of them (and make money by using our PCs to spam other people!).

Another example last week, also linked to organized crime, experts said, was pop-up ads that upload password-stealing spyware on people's PCs when they go to banking sites such as PayPal, USBank, and 40+ others (see Australian IT).

These exploits aren't particularly new, but over the past two weeks have affected a lot more people, which on the positive side means a whole lot more people have become aware of them and are alerting their families and taking precautions (click here for solutions).