In 8 months I had 3 attacks hacking tryes. [2 through scam mails and 1 directly to my computer] I never hide nothing valuable in the computer but is a bit weird] How likely is that hackers try to hack traders?
Oh boy! Are you really that naive? How should the hacker know in advance that you have nothing important on your computer? And: then your computer will be made a member of a bot-net providing an attack platform, or sending out mass-spam... They hack everybody. You should protect your computer (firewall etc.), and never open unwanted email-attachments. And enable plugins like the flash-plugin only on demand, and same for javascript: activate it only if necessary for the site. Web scripting languages like Javascript are the most dangerous thing. Add Java to that. And disable HTML in your email program because it can contain a scripting language like Javascript. And: get rid of Windows because of the many backdoors built into it, and it spying and reporting your files, emails, and your web-visits to sites... Best thing you can do is switching to Linux. And use an ad-blocker. And: ever heard of ransom-ware? Just inform yourself about this newest criminal activity of the bad hackers. And: they can even place some compromising files on your computer, like child-porn, or terrorist propaganda, or make you look like a mafia-supporter etc... etc... And for advanced protection: start each program under a fictional user (ie. "Run as ..."), so that each program uses the private home folder of that fictional user... (because normally each program started by you has access to everything in your home folder... RunAs prevents this...)
Even if you secure the heck out of your own computer, what about the computers of others who have much of your info? Equifax data leak could involve 143 million consumers 9/7/2017, 2:19:50 PM · by granite · 19 replies Techcrunch ^ | 9/7/2017 | Ron Miller Security data breach equifax Equifax data leak could involve 143 million consumers Posted 25 minutes ago by Ron Miller (@ron_miller) Data leaks have become so commonplace that it’s incredibly easy to become numb to them, but credit reporting service Equifax announced a doozy today that when all is said and done could involve 143 million consumers. This is bad. It was a treasure trove of information for the bad guys out there and included Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses and, in some instances, driver’s license numbers. As though that weren’t bad enough, 209,000 people had their credit card info...
You can run a virtual machine (virtualbox.org) on your PC/Laptop and only run your online banking/trading platform inside the virtual machine. If your host machine gets compromised (web browsing, email etc) you have a layer of security that shields access to your trading platform.
Yeah, virtual machine is good choice, but if you're not a proffesional you can't protect your computer and personal data properly. I can suggest you some specialized companies if you're interested in it. Or you can use Google and find good option. As for me, I'm a little bit paranoid about personal data protection, that is why I always use secured VPS.