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YourHub.com \\ Lakewood \\ Stories \\ Tips & Techniques \\ Computers/Electronics

Keeping Yourself Safe on the Internet

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Contributed by: Z.J Czupor on 4/27/2008

Internet safety turns out to consist of two major elements: programs and behaviors. We'll tackle programs first.
Every computer should have all four of the following things:

1. An Antivirus program. This does not have to cost money. AVG Antivirus Free edition V7.5 is quite good and available for free from free.grisoft.com. It both updates and runs every day and if you leave your computer on all the time it can be configured to update and run in the middle of the night.

2. An enabled firewall. Windows XP and Vista have their own built in firewall. All that needs to be done is to turn it on, which can be done from the Windows Firewall icon inside of Control Panel.

3. An Antispyware program. Almost everyone knows what computer viruses are, but not everyone knows what spyware is. Spyware is stealthy programs that install themselves on your computer against your will. They have two purposes: to make you buy something or to steal your identity. Once again, you can get a program to deal with these threats for free. It's called Super Antispyware, available from www.superantispyware.com. The free version won't run itself automatically. It must be run manually. Running it once a month is usually sufficient.

4. All of the applicable Microsoft Windows updates. The Automatic Updates icon in Control Panel will let you set up to receive these updates automatically. Just remember that your computer may reboot in the middle of the night on the second Tuesday of the month when Microsoft releases its latest batch of updates.

In addition to having these programs protect you, there are certain behaviors which are necessary to keep you safe:

1. If you receive an e-mail that has an attachment and you don't know the sender, don't open the attachment.

2. If you receive an e-mail purporting to be from a firm that you do business with that asks you to go to a website and enter personal information such as passwords, account numbers or social security numbers, don't. This is called phishing and no matter how official and proper the e-mail looks, it is usually a scam.

3. If you want to buy something on the Internet, look at the address in the address bar. If it doesn't start with "HTTPS:" don't make the purchase. The "HTTPS:" indicates that the website to which you are giving your personal information is securely linked to your browser so that it cannot be intercepted. If the website only says HTTP that is NOT secure and makes you vulnerable to identity theft.

4. Please recognize that free downloads, such as screensavers, games and music may not really be free after all. They may contain spyware, viruses and other nasty software that you really don't want on your computer.

5. If you really feel that you must enter that sweepstakes, respond to that free offer or fill out any form that asks for your e-mail address, first set up a free e-mail address with one of the web providers that has these. Websites that provide free e-mail accounts include Yahoo, Google and Microsoft Live Mail. Once you have set up a free account, you can use that address to deflect spam and other undesirable items away from your true e-mail address.

If you would like more information for how to keep your computer and computing safe, call Jonathan Miran at Plain and Simple Computing, 720-333-6958; or visit: www.plainandsimplecomputing.com.

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CONTRIBUTOR INFORMATION

Z.J Czupor

Denver , CO

Z.J Czupor has posted 85 stories and 0 comments since joining on 6/26/2007. Z.J Czupor 's average story rating is 5.

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