Recent research has found that the majority of internet and broadband users are not capable of distinguishing between real and fake pop-ups.

A study carried out at North Carolina State University found that surfers were fooled by malicious messages 63 per cent of the time.

Despite making a number of initial mistakes, users continued to fall for the false warnings, which encouraged them to download dangerous or harmful files onto their machines.

Tony Neate, managing director of Get Safe Online stated: "[Pop-ups] are a bit like phishing emails; they have now become very sophisticated, and it's very difficult to know what they are and what they carry.

"The best thing to do, unless you are expecting it, is to become very wary of them and just don't have them."

He recommends turning off pop-ups on all internet browsers and then to choose for each site visited whether or not they should be allowed.

Mr Neate notes that certain sites will require pop-ups to be enabled so that users can fill in details or other legitimate purposes.

However, he stated that many will simply be advertising or even something more sinister.

A recent report made by Symantec found that just over 711,000 viruses were identified in the past year. It also revealed that the number of unique phishing emails increased by five per cent, up to 208,000.

The firm observed that there were an average of 62,000 zombie computers operating every day in the second half of the year, a figure which represented a 17 per cent increase on the same period 12 months ago.


Tuesday, 7th October 2008

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