Security

Unfortunately I have read that many people have been getting their e-gold accounts hacked into lately, so I thought I would write an article with some security tips.

Regarding e-gold one of the first measures you can take to massively increase your e-gold security is to enable the Accsent security. If you have a static IP this will work perfectly, you can put your IP into accsent and then you will only be able to login to your e-gold account from your IP address. If a login is made from a different IP e-gold will send you an email to your registered address with a pin code you need to enter to gain access, so it is very important to use a secure email provider like safe-mail and use a very strong password. If you do not have a static IP address all is not lost as you can select part of an IP address, for example 213.293.40.*.

Always be careful with passwords, never use anything that relates to you in anyway like your date of birth. Make them long and as strong as possible. Software like roboform, keepass are very helpful as they save your passwords and remove the need to type them in.

A firewall is very important. A good hardware firewall is preferable but if this is not an option there are various software firewalls. I have heard good things about zonealarm. It is essential that no ports are visible for potential hackers and port scanners to exploit. I have a found a free service called shields up very helpful, it will scan all your ports and let you now if they are visible to others.

A good virus killer is a must, popular choices include Norton Anti-Virus, Avast and Mcafee. Running it as frequently as possible is a good idea, especially if you have been using the internet. Also, make you sure you keep it upto date.

Spyware and Adware also unwanted evils. Adaware is an excellent program that will scan your registry, hard disks and memory for malicious software. I run aware everyday and it always finds something new if I have been online! Be sure to update it regularly.

If use use Microsoft Windows always make sure you have downloaded and installed all the latest security updates. You can get windows to download these automatically by enabling “automatic updates”. You can find this under “Security Centre” in control panel if you are using Windows XP.

Do not use Internet Explorer, there are too many security vulnerabilities for hackers to exploit. A great alternative is Mozilla Firefox.

Do not leave fund in e-gold for longer than neccesary, outexchange them with an exchanger or put them into a program. At least this way if you did get hacked, there would be no gold to steal, saves on the storage fees too.

Many hackers try and setup “phishing websites”. These are sites that often look very genuine and ask you to enter your egold number and password. E-gold will never ask you for this information so if you are ever asked it is definitely a phishing attempt, close the website/email immediately.

Never run any .exe file unless you are certain it is not some kind of malicious software. It is also very useful to know exactly what .exe files are currently running on your system. Task manager is great for this. If you are unsure what any of the exe files are that are running on your system, this website has a searchable database that contains most of the legitimate exe files and tells you in detail what they are. If you are unable to find out what a particular file is that is running, it is likely to be something malicious and you should probably end it.

A little additional measure you can take is to use a little program called Sandboxie. This is a small program that allows you to run browser sessions that save all changes to a “virtual sandbox” so they do not affect your pc in anyway.

Another option is a live linux CD. There are several distrubutions of linux that have live CDs. This allows you to boot up into linux from CD and login to your egold account this way. The great thing with live CDs is the fact that CDs are of course read-only so no malicous software can ever be written to the CD. It is like a completely fresh install of an OS everytime it boots up. The Slax and Ubuntu distrubutions have live CDs and both have firefox included. Slax is ideal for people on a slower connection as the CD image is less than 200meg.