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Keeping Children
Safe
Any surfer soon learns the hazards. Innocent searches will
bring up porno sites, and web filters do a notoriously poor
job of filtering them out. If you want to prevent your child
from viewing sites he shouldn't, the honest truth is that
you can't. A technically adept child will always be a step
ahead of you. Only person-to-person supervision works consistently.
Drive-By Downloads
Then there are the websites that glom onto your computer.
The first of these made cookies, small files on your hard
drive containing anything you typed into their site. Once
you are convinced to provide personal data, they ask for a
lot. All of it can be stored on your PC in cookies. Mostly,
these files are only readable by the sites that made them,
but there are exceptions.
A more recent and more dangerous development is the 'drive-by
download.' This hostile program installs itself onto your
computer as soon as you display the exploitative webpage.
This program might do anything from pestering you with pop-up
advertising to scanning all of your Internet traffic for hints
of products they might be able to sell to you. Hostile downloads
can even monitor your typing for credit card numbers or passwords,
passing anything they find to crime syndicates in Asia or
eastern Europe.
Old Style Hacking
Before drive-by downloads, web site developers had limited
access to your data. They could learn the operating system
you had, the browser type, and the version numbers of each.
If you had a high speed connection with no firewall or router,
they could learn your IP address. That's the twelve digit
number that identifies you on the web.. Once a hacker identifies
your browser, operating system and IP address, he can use
public information (there are websites, magazines, even a
tradeshow for hackers) about the vulnerabilities of that particular
version of Windows and/or Internet Explorer, to break into
your hardware - specifically your hard drive. He could read
any data stored there, or store anything there (like program
code for example) for use later.
Protecting Yourself
The best way to keep your data safe is to keep it off your
computer. But that is frequently impractical. The next best
way to secure data is to encrypt it. PGP (for 'Pretty Good
Privacy') software is easy to install and use. But if a computer
problem causes you to be locked out by your own encryption,
which sometimes happens, the experience can be traumatic.
Which is more important to you - that your data be absolutely
protected from prying eyes, or that it be absolutely available
to you when you need it? You can't have both.
Buy a Router
Your best protection of DSL or cable Internet against
hackers is a router. Even without built-in firewall software,
this $50 device hides your IP address from those trolling
the web for unprotected PCs. Make sure you set a password.
A household with a wireless router and network has other vulnerabilities.
Firewall software becomes more important.
Keep Your AntiVirus
Software Current
Over ten thousand viruses got 'into the wild' during 2004,
and they spread faster than ever. The computer security industry
expects 40,000 more in 2005. Virus protection companies have
their hands full. The challenge of fighting viruses is enough.
They don't have time to protect us against hackers, spam and
pop-ups too. I look for simplicity of use, promptness in responding
to new threats, and excellent customer service. I like PC-cillin,
found at www.antivirus.com.
Pop-Up Advertising
Many people have seen their screen plastered with advertising
so quickly as to make their PCs useless. Be careful. Avoid
adware. Never type anything into or buy anything from a pop-up
ad. The only place to click on pop-ups is in the upper right
corner to close them. At least 25,000 advertising exploits
exist now. Each wants you to innocently display their website
so that they can attach themselves to your PC. The most untrustworthy
popups offer anti-popup software. These are never legitimate.
Go to download.com instead. Find and install free copies of
Ad-Aware (accept no imitations) and Spybot, and run them whenever
pop-ups become an annoyance. To minimize problems from popups
I run one or the other every time I finish surfing.
Spam, spam, spam,
spam, spam
Most ISPs offer free spam filtering now. Unfortunately, if
you distributed your email address indiscriminately and your
address has gotten onto many lists, the filter may not help
much. The only way to kill spam completely is to change your
email address. That's a rash move. If it becomes necessary,
takes steps to insure it won't happen again. In addition to
your new address, create some free addresses on yahoo, hotmail
or gmail. Then, if a website won't display until you register,
give them one of your alternate email addresses. If you need
to go to that mailbox to retrieve something (like a password),
you can use webmail to do so. Anything important can be forwarded
to your primary address. And periodically you can highlight
everything and delete it all, empty the trash and get a fresh
start.
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