This past week, someone hacked into my parents' email account and started sending out malicious links. Because my Dad was out of town and my Mom is quite the workaholic, it took them a few days to realize the problem. Before the problem was stopped, about five or six links were emailed out to a whole bunch of people, myself included.
Although there's not much to be done after the fact, something that really ought to be done if this ever happens to you is to check your computer for malware. Malware has been known to send emails to your listserv. How embarrassing would it be for malware to get onto your computer, and then send spam and malicious links to your clients? Prevent this from happening with this week's Tech Tool of the Week: Malwarebytes Anti-Malware.
Malwarebytes is a free program you can download that screens your computer for malware. It works very much like an anti-virus program, except that it scans for things other than viruses, such as spyware, trojan horses, adware etc. Malware is short for malicious software, so malware is anything on your computer that's causing it to do things you don't intend, like send spam links from your email. If your email is hacked, and all you do is change your password, you might not have completely solved the problem. If it's malware that's doing it and not some hacker, then it would only be a matter of time before your email is sending out spam links again.
Content marketers, just like any other business or profession, need to protect their computers and data from security threats. A security threat can not only crash your computer or take your identity, but also make you look bad through spammy emails. Why wait for a security breach to happen before doing something? Take the first step with this week's Tech Tool of the Week.