Hack Attack: Internet & Email Security - Knowledge Share Wednesday, 04/26/17, 1-4pm ET

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@Tigereyze209 wrote:

My dad has a gateway device with his internet service, and it has built in hardware firewall protection.

I am curious how effective att gateways are at hardware firewall protection, as opposed to software firewalls.

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You really want to use both.

A hardware firewall is great at preventing certain types of attacks, such as storms, and other similar DoS type.  It also does a reasonable job of abstracting your devices.

However, with so much IoT proliferation, and potentially bad apps and similar getting installed, a s/w firewall is a good backup/added-level, as it protects your computer/device, within your "home network", even if certain ports are open (unless the firewall rules are set to get around things like port 443, really bad idea IMO).

IoT devices can be very sketchy, and with uPnP being so popular, the s/w firewall at least provides some protection from this combination...

More and more people have NAS devices too, which also often use uPnP, or otherwise traverse ports, so you need to protect against this as well.

Think of your s/w firewall as protecting your device from your other devices ;-]

I found this post published last week

AT&T Internet and Email Security

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@Tigereyze209 wrote:

My dad has a gateway device with his internet service, and it has built in hardware firewall protection.

I am curious how effective att gateways are at hardware firewall protection, as opposed to software firewalls.

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@Tigereyze209 Hardware firewalls will be faster but not so that you would notice. The key to an effective firewall is frequent updates to their database. Ultimately, any firewall only keeps lower skilled hackers out. However, higher skilled hackers are mostly interested in the big fish, corporations or governments.

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@Tigereyze209 wrote:

In an earlier post, I asked about the Yahoo "state agent" security hacks, and I was asking how it affected att and what the att customer can do about it, if their account was ones of the "lucky" accounts to be hacked.

 

@Tigereyze209 Customers directly impacted by the hack would of been contacted via their preferred contact method, and AT&T took proactive action securing the account for them. AT&T also recommends you periodically change your password as a personal security measure. 

 

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Just today, I've been inundated with hundreds of spam emails regarding "newsletter" sign-ups.  I have nto signed up for the 100's of newsletters that are "responding" to my inquiry.  outside of clicking spam on each one of them, what can be done to stop them, besides getting a new email account....

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@RhodesMan wrote:

I found this post published last week

AT&T Internet and Email Security

 

 

 

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That link has excelent information directly related to this topic.   Thanks for sharing. Much appreciated.

I swear.. att's support posts are getting better looking, and more informative.

Note: That is a good thing.

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@wggmkg wrote:

Just today, I've been inundated with hundreds of spam emails regarding "newsletter" sign-ups.  I have nto signed up for the 100's of newsletters that are "responding" to my inquiry.  outside of clicking spam on each one of them, what can be done to stop them, besides getting a new email account....

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Couple of options, none of them perfect, all requiring some degree of manual review.

1. Using your email client (app, web, whatever), use the "spam marking" mechanism, to indicate the sender or domain is spam.

2. Unsubscribe from sites or lists. Often, a single access of a site seems to make them think you want 3 newsletters a day now, which is irritating.  The good news is, if it's a legitimate site, most operators are aware that they must offer you an opt-out mechanism.

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@pgrey wrote:

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@wggmkg wrote:

Just today, I've been inundated with hundreds of spam emails regarding "newsletter" sign-ups.  I have nto signed up for the 100's of newsletters that are "responding" to my inquiry.  outside of clicking spam on each one of them, what can be done to stop them, besides getting a new email account....

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Couple of options, none of them perfect, all requiring some degree of manual review.

1. Using your email client (app, web, whatever), use the "spam marking" mechanism, to indicate the sender or domain is spam.

2. Unsubscribe from sites or lists. Often, a single access of a site seems to make them think you want 3 newsletters a day now, which is irritating.  The good news is, if it's a legitimate site, most operators are aware that they must offer you an opt-out mechanism.

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@pgrey That is a great answer.

-ATTU-verseCare

this is a an example of what I'm getting:

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