Today, October 1, marks the start of National Cyber Security Awareness Month in the U.S.

At Lavasoft, we’re happy to endorse this public awareness campaign to encourage everyone to protect their computers and raise awareness about the importance of online security. What can you do to help promote this year’s theme, “Our Shared Responsibility”? Take a look at the StaySafeOnline.org site for details on how businesses, home users, and educators can get involved. For those stateside, also be sure to check out the list of events taking place this month throughout the U.S. to support the campaign.

There’s some interesting reading, for those who want to learn more about cyber crime and how it’s progressing, over at CNN.com today. The article “Cybercrime: A Secret Underground Economy” takes you through the process of ‘how the deed is done’ and gives estimates for what varying pieces of information go for on the online Black Market.

If you are anything like me, and I daresay, like most young(ish) people of my generation, I would hasten a guess that you are on Facebook or MySpace. I would also lay money on the fact that you randomly update your page with mindless comments about you day- you know the sort of thing I mean. 'I missed the bus on the way to work', 'my boss is in a lousy mood', 'can't wait for my much deserved and longed after glass of wine this evening' etc etc. Dare I say it?

An editorial piece in the New York Times caught my eye this past week. Here’s how it begins:

“Internet users used to comfort themselves by thinking that to become victims of the pirates of the Web, they had to frequent the online porn circuit or respond to an e-mail from the widowed wife of the former central bank governor of Nigeria. The idea was that one had to do something naughty to get caught in the wrongdoers’ net, or at least go for a late-night stroll in the rough end of town.”

Here’s a cyber crime update out of Lavasoft’s own corner of the world –

Swedish telco, TeliaSonera AB, has shut down the Internet connection to Real Host, a Latvian bullet proof ISP, following on the heels of complaints from security researchers who connected the provider to one of the most prominent cyber crime networks used to propagate online fraud.