For non-Apple users like me who were feeling some degree of relief that the recent theft of a million Apple UDIDs didn’t directly impact us, there’s more bad news. Anonymous has brought down the GoDaddy servers along with other millions of websites hosted by the company. Bringing all of us to the brim of vulnerability, once again. GoDaddy, the domain registrar and web hosting company, faced tremendous disruption when their own websites and other websites hosted by the company were literally brought down. According to recent updates, GoDaddy has managed to restore most of their own services, however, websites hosted by GoDaddy continue to experience outages.

iYogi recommends that all PC users should take precautions against data theft and security breaches by going through the following checklist:

  1. Ensure your system Firewall is up and running to ward off threats. The Windows 7 OS comes with the Windows Firewall automatically installed. To check go to Start> Control panel> Windows Firewall> Make sure there is a Green Shield with a check mark against Domain Networks or Private/Home Networks and the status is Connected.
  2. Ensure your antivirus software is installed properly and the settings customized to your preferences. In case you do not have an antivirus installed, you can download the free Microsoft Security Essentials.
  3. Run a vulnerability scan for your PC which will check the settings of your antivirus, antispyware, Firewall and also tell you if your system is optimized. You can download the free iYogi PC Optimizer.