Online Safety

Keyloggers
Phishing Scams

There are various kinds of safety issues that you as a runescape player and internet user should be aware of. Here are some major ones that you may want to know about:

- keyloggers - keyloggers are programs that get on your machine in one way or another and store all of the information that you type into a text file. Then the program will email the entire file back to the creator of the keylogger. These can steal emails that you wrote, login values that you typed, or even credit card information. Always make sure that you have an up-to-date virus program to catch these. If you don't have appropriate funds for one, here are some other programs that I have used to keep my computers running smoothly:

Ad-Aware - Really great program by Lavasoft. They also have programs with more features if you want to pay a little more than free...
Spy-Bot Search and Destroy - I definitely recommend this one. It has a feature called "Immunize" that blocks certain bad programs from even being able to run. It also has a scanner that has consistant definition updates.

- phising (fishing) scams - Any attempt to get a user to enter information or visit a site under a false pretense. For example, if you receive an email that states that it is from "paypal", and asks you to follow a link to update your information. When you click on the link it goes to a page that appears to be paypal, but if you look at the address of the page it might say something like:

232.142.49.225/steal_your_stuff.html

or if they put a little more time into their scam, it may say:

www.paypal.com.info.alblekgllwogoobl.com/example/steal_your_stuff.html

at first glance, the second address may look like it is valid, but it is not at paypal.com at all, it is actually a page on the subdomain of "alblekgllwogoobl.com", and by entering your information you will be sending your login details directly to the owner of this site. And once they have your login details, they will definitely go shopping.

so always ensure that you are at the correct domain, and that there is a "/" after the domain name. For example:
runescape.com/
paypal.com/
myspace.com/

Myspace is also really bad about phishing scams. The one that I have seen the most is an image that appears to be a video, and when you click on it to play the video you are sent to a page that appears to be the myspace home page and it states "You must be logged in to do that". If you ever see this, then make sure that you check the address bar.

You may be wondering, "how can phishing scams get me as a runescape player?" ... Well, while phishing scams are typically attempts to get you to type in information and submit it through a web form, they can also be someone trying to get you to download a program. Here are some examples of how someone could attack you as a runescape player:

• You receive an email saying, "visit my site to get a free godsword shard!!" so you decide to go to the site because you have not read my safety tips at this point and you are a bit naive.
  You click on his site link and you see a form with a place for you to enter your username and password, and it says, "enter your username and password to get your free godsword shard!!".
  By entering your login values you will not get anything free, not a godsword, not a dragon full helm, not a dragonic visage, and definitely not a blue phat or christmas cracker lol. The only person who will get anything free is the person you just sent your login details to.
  In some situations they may steal your account, they may steal your items (though this is harder with the unbalanced trade rules), or they could just go through your bank and drop all of your items on the ground (though they wouldn't profit, some hackers still enjoy doing mean things for no reason). So never enter your login details anywhere but on runescape.com. I suggest that you don't even set up accounts with the same login values anywhere else, especially runescape fan sites.
• You receive another email saying, "visit my site to get a free godsword shard!!" so you decide to go to the site again. You click on his site link and then a box pops up that asks if you want to run a program (always click cancel unless you know what program you are going to run).
  Still naive, you go ahead and click run and look at the site. The site then says, "sorry, we are all out of godsword shards, check back next week..." By this point, your computer is already compromised with most likely a keylogger and then anything that you type (including your runescape login details) will be sent to the hacker.

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