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Easy Internet Security - Keeping Your Computer Secure

Welcome to my internet security article. Here, I teach beginners how to protect their computer from viruses, worms and hackers. If you need to have your private files secure and would like to grasp the essentials of internet security quickly, you've come to the right place.

What's going on online?

There are many different types of people who do shifty things on the internet, here are some definitions. Many of these terms are interrelated.

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Hackers - A personal who breaks into computers and networks. Sometimes they just seek a thrill and other times they are looking for information about individuals and companies.

Stalkers - People who exploit women and children, particularly in chat rooms.

Con Artists - A person who tries to sell you a very low-quality product for money. These are often get-rich-quick products.

Identity Thieves - People who impersonate others by stealing something personal of theirs, e.g. a birth certificate.

Personal Profilers - Websites who's primary purpose is to take information and sell it to companies.

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Patches and Windows Update

Remember to update security patches. This leaves your computer less prone to exploits relating to Windows. Run the program "Windows Update" from the Start menu.

Spending money

Always investigate before spending your money. This way, you are less likely to be caught up in a scam. Search the product on Google, read reviews.

Beware of downloads

For ordinary computers, downloads are the number #1 way for a virus to get onto your computer. Always know where the file you just downloaded came from and that you are confident in the source. Of course, some files you really cannot tell beforehand if its a virus. Typically, viruses come in .exe files. Have your antivirus (see below) scan the new file immediately.

Emails

With emails, the most worrisome people are so-called spammers. Spammers are people who send unsolicited emails, often of a commercial nature, sent indiscriminately to multiple mailing lists, individuals, or newsgroups. Emails of this nature are simply referred to as junk email.

The best way to deal with this is to choose a good email service. A lot of ISPs have poor email services, which allow spam.

Gmail, Yahoo! and Hotmail

Gmail, Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail are three excellent free email services. All three programs also allow you to use their instant messaging programs, with Hotmail's MSN "Live" Messenger the most popular. Gmail is a service from Google, Yahoo! Mail is from the famous search engine and Hotmail is from MSN/Microsoft.

All three services have excellent spam protection. They filter spam email into its own folder. Of course, you can't prevent all spam email. If you do get spam in your inbox, simply mark it as spam and the email service prevent you from receiving emails from the offender again. Some genuine emails can be accidentally market as spam, so often check in your spam folder for missed emails.

Click here to go to Gmail.

Click here to go to Yahoo! Mail.

Click here to go to Hotmail.

Passwords

Defending against Password-Crackers

Password-crackers are computers that find your username from a particular service (e.g. PayPal) and enters in thousands of potential passwords, hoping to access your account.

The following passwords are very bad and will likely be cracked by the password-cracker: 123, password, abc, superman, apple, snake.

A good password is longer and uses a mixture of numbers and letters in an unusual way.

Creating multiple passwords

Remember to create multiple passwords. This prevents someone who finds out your password to be able to access every account you have.

Change your passwords regularly

It's a good practice to change your password once in a while. This will make your password more cracker-proof. It also defends against friends and family knowing your password.

How to remember passwords

An easy way to store passwords is in a notepad file (.txt). Write down the website, username and password of users you create. Remember to keep this file safe, however. Remember to keep this file on a USB as well.

A number of online password keepers are also available like Steganos or PasswordSafe.

How to protect yourself against viruses

Computer users need to install antivirus software to prevent viruses from invading their computer. Here are a few common terms:

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Virus - Computer programs which invade your privacy and come in many different forms. Viruses infect your computer like a bug infects you in real life. Viruses can do a range of things, including deleting files and recording your keystrokes (with the purpose of obtaining passwords).

Worm - A worm is a type of virus. It is computer code planted illegally in a software program so as to destroy data in any system that downloads the program, as by reformatting the hard disk. They duplicate themselves and often email themselves to others.

Trojan Horse - Trojan horses hide themselves in programs. It is a nonreplicating computer program planted illegally in another program to do damage locally when the software is activated.

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How do you become infected by a virus?

People become infected with viruses when they download files. Viruses are often attachments to spam emails or are embedded inside a program you want to download.

Protect yourself against viruses

So how do I protect myself against their terrible things? You can do so by installing an antivirus program. Many people use commercial programs like Norton Antivirus, apparently "the world's most trusted antivirus". But why plunk down a lump of cash for something you can get for free.

Two excellent free programs - Avast Home Edition and AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition

Here are two excellent free antivirus solutions. I've been using Avast Home Edition for about 6 years now and I still think it's a wonderful solution. Both Avast Home Edition and AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition have the technology of a high-tech commercial antivirus, but they're both free. Both programs provide real-time protection against viruses (stopping them as they try to enter your computer) by scanning downloaded files, instant messages, e-mails, and a host of P2Ps, and both have constant virus database updates (so you can take care of the newer viruses). Both programs run soundly and seamlessly in the background.

After you install it, it's good to set a boot-time (startup) scan to check your computer for viruses already on it. Both these antiviruses are efficient at finding sneaky viruses.

Installing the antiviruses

Simply run the setup file and it will guide you through the rest of the process.

Download.com Avast Home Edition / Avast Antivirus Homepage

Download.com AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition / Grisoft Homepage

Shopping online without worry

You know that eBay and Amazon are fine, but how do you know if other websites aren't going to steal your credit card number? The trick is with a special little lock.

The lock ensures that you are on a secure website. Never enter your credit card details on a page where the address bar is not in a shade of yellow and there is a lock on the address bar.

Protecting your laptop

Laptops are often very expensive and also contain your private files. Do not let a thief steal your laptop. Using a computer lock is the simplest and a very effective way to prevent theft. The reason it is so helpful is that thieves are often in a hurry. Remember to get a lock that has a strong steel cable, so you can tie it to a piece of furniture.

Keeping your browser secure

Browsers are vulnerable to browser exploits continually found by hackers. Here, I will provide a range of tips to allow you to browse the web safely.

Download Mozilla Firefox

Mozilla Firefox is an excellent browser program. It replaces Microsoft Internet Explorer. Currently, it's the world's 2nd most popular browser. So why use it? Most browser exploits are aimed at Internet Explorer (because the majority of people use it), so more and more people are turning to alternative browsers. If you've been around computers for a long time, you probably know a lot of people who use this browser already. Mozilla Firefox has also been found to be slightly more efficient than Internet Explorer. It was the browser that introduced tabbed browsing.

There are other browsers you can use, for example Opera Browser or Avant Browser.

Download McAfee SiteAdvisor

This is a wonderful free program from the well known company McAfee. SiteAdvisor has a small tab in your browser (Mozilla Firefox or Internet Explorer). The system it uses is extraordinarily simple. The tab turns red if the website you're on is bad, yellow if you should watch out and green if the website is safe. Websites are evaluated by volunteers for McAfee. Currently, they have thousands of websites evaluated and even my small website. So most likely, they would have evaluated all the websites you commonly visit.

Click here to go to the McAfee SiteAdvisor homepage.

Download browser updates

If you chose to stick with Internet Explorer (not recommended), remember to look up browser patches. This will make your browser less vulnerable. Recently IE had a major flaw, allowing hackers to control your computer. The flaw has been corrected with a critical patch, downloadable from Windows Update.

Protecting your network

It is suggested that you use a firewall to protect your network (as well as your singular computer). A firewall is an integrated collection of security measures designed to prevent unauthorized electronic access to a networked computer system. The people who try to access your computer are termed hackers, whom we have already learnt about. Like antiviruses, there are free and commercial firewalls. I can suggest two excellent free ones (of course there are plenty more).

ZoneAlarm Firewall and Comodo Firewall Pro

These are both excellent free firewalls. I've used ZoneAlarm Firewall for about 6 years and haven't had any problems with it. Both firewalls do their jobs properly and have frequent updates for defence against the newest threats. Note that ZoneAlarm Firewall has a 2000/XP version and a Vista version. I've heard the Vista version is still being tweaked, so stick with Comodo Firewall Pro if you have Vista. The 2000/XP version of ZoneAlarm has of course been improved over a number of years and is extremely popular.

Download.com ZoneAlarm Firewall (XP/2000) / Zone Labs homepage (hard to navigate)

Download.com Comodo Firewall Pro / Comodo Firewall Pro homepage

Conclusion

Thanks for reading this guide to internet security. I hope the solutions I've recommended on this guide will serve you for a long time.

Posted by Proabffmm on Tuesday, January 27, 2009.