BASIC TIPS:
Keep Your Computer Safe
Surfing the Internet exposes you to new risks that can threaten your system's integrity.
The very architecture of the Internet that allows you to tap into all of the wondrous sites on the World Wide Web also makes your computer vulnerable.
But if you take a few simple precautions, you should be able to avoid most, if not all, risks.
- Viruses -- One of the most common ways for a virus to infect your computer is through the Internet. (Inserting a diskette contaminated with a virus can also infect your system.) Viruses range from the annoying (words pop up onscreen now and then) to destructive (those that destroy files and even entire drives).
The cure is relatively easy:
- Buy and install a good anti-virus program.
MacAfee and Norton are two of the best known names in the field. If the program asks you whether you want it to run in the background all of the time, say yes.
- Run your anti-virus program often.
Most programs have a feature where you can set them to scan all of your folders and files automatically at times convenient for you.
- Update your anti-virus program often.
New viruses emerge every day, so you download upgrades from your vendor's Internet site regularly. Remember that your program cannot protect you against a virus that it does not know about, so you want to keep its roster as fresh as can be.
- Use caution when you download from the Internet.
To avoid downloading a virus along with the program or graphic requires making sure that your anti-virus program is monitoring the download. And deal only with sites that you trust.
- Cookies - Cookies are undeniably controversial. In the right hands, it is a cookie that allows a site to recognize you as a registered visitor and give you a personalized greeting onscreen -- "Hi, Bonnie." And, when I order books on Amazon.com, it is a cookie the remembers all my credit-card information, so that I do not have to risk sending it across the Internet again and again.
But an unscrupulous vendor could create a cookie to deposit onto your hard drive that could track all of your succeeding movements. Then when you visit the evil vendor's site again, the cookie would tell them every place you had visited online -- a true invasion of privacy.
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| Some browsers allow you the option to refuse all cookies, or to warn you when one is going to be planted into your hard drive, giving you the option of saying yea or nay. You can also go into your Netscape or Microsoft Internet Explorer files and look for the cookies .txt files after each Internet surfing session to see what has been planted. If you don't like it, remove it.
...back to Be Safe Online |
- BASIC TIPS: Online Safety
- BASIC TIPS: Keep Your Computer Safe
- BASIC TIPS: Bugs and Security Holes
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