High Speed Internet Personal Computer Security

Archive for October, 2008

30 Oct

Seeking Help When An Online Crimes Occurs

Because children nowadays don't like playing with toys anymore and they choose to spend their leisure time playing on the internet, it is becoming harder and harder to please this category of children. Games nowadays can be accessed using the Internet or computers and for some children, online games have even taken the place of the real time playing. Times have indeed shifted and it is now possible to dispose of many opportunities when using the internet.

Even so, computers and thus the Internet can be used as valuable tools to ensure children are kept entertained and interested in the business. However, if they decide to lurk around on their own, they might encounter some serious problems, clicking out of accident on pornography sites or simply logging into social networks such as MySpace and Friendster and thus accessing strangers on the internet. Out of such unbounded communication, nasty things can arise therefore, it is best to keep an eye on your child if you are a parent caring for his or her safety.

Being a parent requires holding special responsibilities to protect the child from accessing malicious content or facing the dangers of online exploitation. Therefore, you need to balance out the restrictions on the internet with the fact that you want to allow your child to access the Internet by himself, in a safe manner. Therefore, you need to ensure that all other protection methods are utilized and that you are using the best protection to ensure your child doesn't get to deal with any internet perpetrator. Therefore, it is best to be on the lookout for any misfortune and be ready to intervene.

Knowing whom to call in case of emergency is extremely important, therefore remember to contact, if anything, the specialized center for missing children called the NCMEC. They will be able to trace anyone with whom your child has engaged verbally on the internet and make sure they can give you some clues. If the child was sent pornographic material, either in photo or video format, if there are any psychological remnants and information on other things. They also hold a hotline for any emergency one might want to point out and that would be accessible at the number 1-800-843-5678.

Provided that some illicit online act might appear on any social network site, then it would be an idea to contact the site administrators who belonging to the respective site, such as the Friendster of Myspace and tell them of t he problem. Giving information on the profile of the offender will make it easier for the administrators to trace back the user, kick him out of the system or even legally address his actions in court. While identities on the internet are constantly shifting and no one really knows who is one, in some countries it is possible though to trace down offenders and make sure they will not make any other illicit acts in the network.

In the case of any suspicion, constant surveillance may be put on the respective user and his actions online can be traced. If local regulations enforce punishment for such illicit, online acts then the police will be able to trace the offender and make sure nothing similar happens in the future. It is after all, a discussion on the safety of your children and this is a vital responsibility for regulators and institutions around.

Also, in case of any perpetration, you might want to contact t the internet provider and find up a way to further protect the safety of your child. Since a perpetrator could even retrieve the IP address of the computer the child is logged into, there are greater risks for something ugly to happen therefore, and it would be a way to further increase the protection of your child. Therefore, make sure you are able to block online attacks to your computer.

Apart from all the solutions outlined above, it would be consistent to be able to inform other people of the dangers the Internet poses to unsuspecting children. Other parents might be passing through the same turmoil as you are. Therefore it would be a great idea to increase awareness of the Internet dangers in other places as well. Spread the words to your friends, relatives, to the parents and mates at school, when participating to social clubs or other activities. Thus, you will be able to gather some support for fighting crime over the Internet.

Schools could also be notified in case something or someone is lurking on the internet, wanting to target unsuspecting children. Therefore, when faced with similar dangers, it would be an idea to create a support network that might acts as a whole when wanting to fight internet crime.
Knowing to whom to go searching for help would definitely be of help when trying to see and combat these problems.

27 Oct

How To Supervise Your Child’s IM And Chatroom Activities

Chat rooms and social networks on the Internet are extremely dangerous for children who don’t know how to distinguish yet from true friends to false friends. The online means of communication makes it impossible to predict which friends are true and which are not. Therefore, it is always recommendable to have some safety precautions available to insure that your children stay safe and protected.

The Following Guidelines Should Be Followed.

Since you know nobody around there, you need to be wary of whoever contacts you online. Identities are concealed on the Internet therefore it is easy to lie.
When setting up a profile, don’t display personal information and if necessary, add false data in there.

Creating relationships means meeting the persons and talking to them in real life and not through the internet, therefore it’s important to let the Internet aside and have an active, social and real life.

If you still want to access chat rooms, choose from the ones with fewer users and more truthful networks. Engaging in a private conversation with someone you don’t know is not advisable but if this happens, make sure you are prepared to deal with the consequences.

Never display information for instance. Your real name, how you can be reached, your phone number, the email address you have or anything relating to credit bank accounts. Don’t share pictures, files or videos with others because the instant messaging system makes it easy to access that information even without too much hassle.

If you would rather not talk to someone, then simply ignore the message and its content. You after all decide with whom to talk to and not.
Use a nickname and never the real name you have. Also, it would be advisable to give a secondary email address, just in case something happens to your primary one.

Even though people might want to access your webcam, restrict their access to it because you decide with whom to talk and not to.

Do not accept any kind of file from people you don’t know. The files might contain malicious viruses that it is best to keep away from your computer.
Listen to what your parents are talking you and make sure your safety comes in first and then everything else. Therefore, it is best to maintain your calm, not consider everything that is said on that chat room and thus your navigation through the internet will be smooth enough.

23 Oct

The Dangers With Social Networks Sites

Children are outgoing by definition and they like to bond with other people. Therefore they might come into contact with people on the Internet through social networks. No one really knows who is who and lies are rife among this trivial conversations. Therefore, one might fake his true identity and pose as the child’s true friend. Children can be even persuaded to give personal details and information regarding themselves and their families and this is really detrimental for one’s safety.

There have been cases of child exploitation on chat rooms and indecent proposals circulating on the Internet. Hours of patience are usually needed to connect with someone and earn his trust and this is a skill perpetrators master. They wait for the child to feel at ease and then they try to convince the child do whatever they want them to do.

Seemingly friendly individuals hide negative personalities and thus, the dangers of becoming involved into something much bigger are really high.
Therefore, after a period of accommodation the child becomes fully at ease talking with a stranger online and can divulge all sorts of information from the house or personal details. That is the only thing the perpetrator has been silently waiting for. Therefore, when the time comes, the perpetrator may want to meet and thus an unfortunate event might happen.

Since it is hard to break the conversation which someone the child feels he or she knows well, they might not want to think in the first place that what they are doing is extremely dangerous not only for themselves but for the family as well. Therefore, it is really important to ensure that the child does not give away important information and that he values his privacy and the need to keep everything safe.

Smaller things can happen when for instance, the child gains access to an online social network and the computer gets infested with spyware, Trojan or viruses from the site the child has accessed. It is equally important to install specialized sites that are able to deal with such threats and protect the safety of your data. Therefore, computer owners might find it difficult to always stay on track with developments and the latest findings but if you want to have a secure computer, then the investment is well worth, rather than taking the risk.

Threats can even increase when your computer is constantly attacked by viruses. If you make a lot of online payment, you can even lose money because the perpetrator might retrieve personal details and be able to access the information and steal all your money. Loss of income is another common problem on the internet.

Moreover, there are some sites which also load up together with adult content. Your child might accidentally stumble across something like that and thus it is fairly important to be able to block out all the attacks and the spam that might show up when using the Internet.

While communicating online is perfectly fine, it is a real problem to contain children from using the Internet and not come across malicious content or dangerous stuff around. Therefore, parents need to be on a constant lookout for problems and be able to react promptly before things get even uglier.

23 Oct

The Dangers With Social Networks And Chat Rooms

Because the Internet today is becoming the norm in our daily lives, it is no wonder many things are done with only the click of a mouse. It is thus possible to communicate with people worldwide, say from China to the US or vice versa, and thus the power the Internet is starting to hold is growing at alarming rates. Children are one of the most exposed categories to the dangers of the Internet, because they are vulnerable and they believe everything that is being said to them. They like to hang around social sites, where there are a lot of fake identities behind hidden motives of people and therefore, the risks are high. Unsuspecting children can be easily targeted.

Children are outgoing by definition and they like to bond with other people. Therefore, they might come into contact with people on the Internet through social networks. No one really knows who is who and lies are rife among this trivial conversations. Therefore, one might fake his true identity and pose as the child’s true friend. Children can be even persuaded to give personal details and information regarding themselves and their families and this is really detrimental for one’s safety.

There have been cases of child exploitation on chat rooms and indecent proposals circulating on the Internet. Hours of patience are usually needed to connect with someone and earn his trust and this is a skill perpetrators master. They wait for the child to feel at ease and then they try to convince the child do whatever they want them to do.

Seemingly friendly individuals hide negative personalities and thus, the dangers of becoming involved into something much bigger are really high.
Children are one of the most exposed categories to the dangers of the Internet, because they are vulnerable and they believe everything that is being said to them.

They like to hang around social sites, where there are a lot of fake identities behind hidden motives of people and therefore, the risks are high. Unsuspecting children can be easily targeted.

23 Oct

How Not To Download Malicious Content Into Your Computer

Children and teenagers represent the target of online attacks on a daily basis. Since the sites children access are sometimes laden with spyware and computer viruses, it would be best to ensure your child knows which content is safe and which is not. Therefore, you need to ensure you can trust your child into successfully managing your computer.

In order to curb computer crashes and make sure you will encounter no further problems, the children need to be aware of certain guidelines that will make their browsing through the internet more efficient.

1. It is advisable to ensure your children do not receive on the internet by peer sharing; this means that a person transmits a file or a document to another person using a means of communication. However in the meantime, your child can also bring into your system unwanted viruses and spyware that will lead eventually to a crash of the system. For instance, computer programs such as kazaa or Grokster can bring potentially harmful content into your system. Make sure your child knows how to stay away from your computer.

2. Music sites or those with lyrics are to be avoided because the sites tend to ask for too many personal details and thus, you could restrict the access to those sites by simply modifying some settings in the browser. Because children are simply unaware of the dangers lurking in the internet, they might download malicious content without them even knowing that.

3. Avoid clicking on banners and all types of pop ups that might appear on some web pages. Because viruses are often incorporated into browsers or advertisements, the children need to take special attention when accessing such information because it is possible that they can contribute to the spreading of harmful content in the system. Therefore, the importance of not clicking into a certain site or banner is to be stressed out.

4. Email attachments that come from unknown sender are better left unopened because there is always the possibility that the content might be lurking in the attachment and once downloaded, it will lead to the spreading of viruses across the whole system, a thing you would certainly not want to happen.

5. Perhaps it would be best to limit the access to computer accounts and make sure everything done by your children on the Internet is kept in a safe place, closely monitored. Therefore, it is important that you keep control over what your children are doing over the internet.

22 Oct

How To Monitor Your Child’s Internet Activity

One of the best ways to watch over your children is to constantly keep an eye on them when using the internet. If this isn’t possible, then you might want to install some safety programs that will ensure your children are safe even when you are away. Therefore, keep in mind the following considerations:

1. The account your children access must be limited. Therefore, only the administrator, that is you, will be able to modify the settings and establish functions.

2. You should browse constantly through the history to watch over the sites your children have accessed. Therefore, by clicking CTRL plus H you will be able to view which content your children have been trying on.

3. One more thing you could do is to open the folder tracking the temporary internet stocks and you can view from there the images, pages and files that your children have accessed and possibly downloaded. By doing so, you ensure that the files are saved every time anyone accesses the internet. This allows you to observe your children’s activity without them knowing about it.

4. Put firewalls on the Internet; their function is to restrict the access your children have over certain sites. The firewalls do not allow a user to open certain sites and it also blocks adware coming from the Internet.

5. Filtering services are also an alternative to firewalls. They block out access on certain sites, thus ensuring your children have no way of clicking on a web page

6. One last measure you could take would be to copy the URL of the sites you want to have blocked and then access Windows Hosts file. This Hosts application can be found in the C disk, Windows Folder, System 32 subfolder. Then click on Drives and you will be able to find it there. Open the file with notepad and copy paste the sites you want to have blocked at all times. For instance, this is an example of what you should do.

The portion would look like localhost then another line www.blocksite.com and you can continue your list with blocked sites from there.

Once You Save This File, The Sites Cannot Be Accessed Anymore.

7. You can also use web monitoring software that can give specialized analysis and data over what content has been accessed and it even allows you to log into conversation, open the files and if needed, print then so that you can ensure you will be able to verify everything they do on the Internet.
All of the steps outlined above are designed to allow you safeguard your children in a way that they don’t necessarily know you are doing that. Therefore, you will be able to guide efficiently and safely your children, without even being present there.

22 Oct

Safety Tips For Accessing Chat Rooms

It is fairly common these days for children to have email accounts. They use these accounts to talk to their friends on the Internet, send instant messages or enter chat rooms and chat to the other people around. On the other side of the issue, having email addresses come with some dangers because children aren’t exactly prepared to deal with security settings and issues.

It is advisable to be aware of certain things before entering chat rooms and there will some guidelines presented below.

Maintain the rules of politeness even though you are online. Even if you talk to people on the internet, this will not act as an excuse to suddenly lose the rules of politeness and be rude to people.

It is important to not talk to strangers on the internet. Even when they offer to be your friend, they might just be online predators looking to exploit the innocence of children. Therefore, it is best to remain wary of whatever happens and be careful to avoid strangers.

It is highly important to never disclose any personal information such as email address, home address, bank accounts, school information or whatever information you feel identifies with you. Firstly, you might want to protect yourself from any online criminal wanting to exploit your insecurities for their own purposes. Since messaging programs are not encrypted that means anyone can access what you discuss online and whatever profiles you have signed up for. Therefore, it is not safe to disclose any information on the Internet of that kind.

Whenever possible, it is important to access only chat rooms that can be trusted, if you really feel the need to enter such chat rooms. Therefore, you can ensure you always have a backing up plan if you see you are assaulted online by a stranger.

Also, it is important to not allow the download of files and sharing if you do not trust the person who is sending those files to you. Therefore, you keep your computer protected and far from any virus infection.

Last but not least, it is important to not share photos to anyone who you can’t trust because you never know what will happen to them. Also, even though someone wants to access your webcam you can always deny access to it if you do not trust the person trying to see you.

21 Oct

The Advantages And Disadvantages Of The Internet

Because the Internet today offers countless possibilities to explore and research information it is thus easier to receive information and be connected to the world. Knowledge used to be the possession of only a certain few, but now it has become publicly displayed with everyone having the same access and availability to the information.

With libraries keeping track of books, people have switched from libraries to online databases which keep track of the information there and store them in an infinitely vast location. The databases can be accessed by anyone and can be studied online, without the need for printing. The Internet is thus responsible for a significant number of changes affecting the world of books, and implicitly of information.
People are willing to share information and engage in a continuous dialogue with other and therefore, Internet is becoming a sort of connecting bridge between them.

The advantages offered by the Internet include the fact that site offer valuable knowledge for free or usually by asking for a small fee, taking into consideration that you can access that information from where you want, whenever you want. Therefore, you can have access to an online encyclopedia and browse through it more conveniently than you would by accessing the book supply in a library. Therefore, you can easily find that you need if you know where to look for that information.

Since the supply of books in a library can run out, you can easily access Amazon or the Barnes and Noble online database to search for the books you need and see whether you can trace them on the Internet or not. A book might be available in an ebook or scanned electronic file that you can easily use if needed.

Apparently, knowledge nowadays comes dressed in different layers because information can be displayed through the use of media. Therefore, one can purchase or make use of the material he or she needs adapted to his own abilities. If the person learns a lot through visualizing things, then he or she could watch videos or learn by using pictures. Since the Internet is so flexible and manageable, it is easy to find a way to satisfy all the individual needs around.

Children can get a lot of help out of this method, because they can do research for school projects and spend their time studying on the Internet. The information can be easily accessed and therefore there is this sense of convenience created that might help your child in his learning abilities

The benefits of the approach come however with disadvantages because the child can easily slip away from school work and search the Internet for other purposes, mostly in search of fun and entertainment. Therefore children can easily wander off into sites that are malicious for them and thus get entangled in things they themselves cannot control. Therefore, students can get too overwhelmed by the quantity of information available on the Internet and might for example, become the victims of online attacks and people whose intentions are not always positive.

If you are the parent of a child frequently using the Internet, then you might want to take some steps to ensure his safety is guaranteed and that he doesn't wander around malicious sites.

For instance, because personal information can be easily traced back online, you need to encourage your child to cut and past the information he uses so that the information cannot be retrieved. The child will have a responsibility on his hands and he will be able to ensure the system stays safe.

Also, you need to make sure the information your child accesses comes from trustworthy sources. Wikipedia and other trusted sites can be listed as starting points for his approach.

Forums, while beneficial to some extent, can represent a potential danger for a child in that it is possible to not always find valuable information. The child might wander around forums and try to connect to the people on the forum, which isn't always the best approach.

Pornography can be easily encountered on the internet and it is difficult to have the necessary software to filter the information; therefore, it is important that your child know the different between play and serious things, and assume a responsibility once accessing an online database.

To conclude with, the internet offers advantages and both disadvantages, therefore, you need to carefully weigh in the advantages and see what you need to do in order to be able to access trusty sources. You need to instill these habits to your children as well, to ensure they don't fall in the trap of online criminals. The internet can be a handy tool for a variety of things, but also consider the other way around as well.

18 Oct

Internet Safety Tips

Because online attacks are rife these days, the email boxes of your children might be constantly bombarded with malicious attacks and spam. Therefore, if the unsuspecting child opens the email he or she might then be targeted by a series of spyware or viruses the computer might not be able to detect. Therefore, it is important to picture in mind the extreme importance of simply deleting the mail you don’t recognize as coming from the right source.

Teach the children how to successfully manage their email addresses by making sure they understand the dangers of accessing just any kind of content. Therefore, you could for instance make sure you install firewall or anti spam software that will be able to allow you track down any attacks and fight them in an effective way.

If the email addresses of your children are currently attracting a lot of spam messages, then this might because they signed up with an email address on a site that shouldn’t be trusted.

They must be able to tell the difference between important emails and those they might just ignore. Therefore, it would be advisable to tell them to resist the temptation of opening whatever they have in the inbox and be able to reply only to the email that is really important.

It is important that you stress out the need of not joining mailing groups. When the child does so, he or she will automatically receive emails from the websites he subscribed to and not only websites can be trusted offer the right material. Therefore, it would be advisable to make sure they do not such things, even though they are innately tempted to do so.

Email filters would be an option to use and thus you need to make sure your child knows how to access one and the benefits it offers. For instance, email filtering doesn’t not allow any corrupted emails to enter your inbox or spam box and thus you can rest assured that your child will be able to manage his email account.

To summarize, your child needs to keep in mind the following rules: that they should not open emails from strangers, that they should not subscribe to unknown website with their email addresses and that it is advisable not to reply to spam. If they do so, then you can trust that they will use the email in an efficient way.

17 Oct

How To Prevent Your Children From Downloading Dangerous Stuff Online

While children might want to share music, videos or other files with other people on the internet, this might not always be the right way to do. Because downloading or transferring files is often illegal, especially under copyright, it is advisable that the children stay away from file sharing. Parents could, for instance, follow the guidelines to ensure things are done the right way.

1. You need to ensure your children understand the risks involved. Piracy is considered an illicit act and can be punished under the penalty of law. Moreover, there is always some possibility that the file sharing comes accompanied with illegal content; therefore it is advisable to not allow any files sharing on your computer. Discuss the consequence of your children’s acts in a calm way and make sure they fully comprehend the risks involved.

2. File sharing might contain viruses that would infiltrate into your system if anything is transmitted over the internet.
Due to copyright regulations, you might also be faced with an incredulous fine, as a result of the fact that someone was accessing illegal content on your computer.

3. Therefore, it is always a good thing to monitor the access to the computer and make sure the children don’t do anything they aren’t allowed to. For instance, you might want to install some safety precautions to impede any future attempts on sharing files or receiving content from another online source.

4. The internet connection could be kept in another room to ensure your children do not have access to the Internet all the time.

5. Another thing you could do would be to install search engines specially tailored after the needs of children. That way, you will further increase the safety of the system.

6. If your child do want, however, to download some content from the internet them it would be an idea to access legal downloading website.

You will of course have to pay for such legal content, mainly referring to downloadable games, software or any mp3s. ITunes and MSN are such trust worthy sites that offer reliable services.

You could also set up a separate email address and account for your child or children to access. By limited, it is usually implied that you can access that account as well. Therefore, in order to maintain control over the Internet and the content your children are accessing, it would be a good idea to just be the administrator of your own computer and watch over what is happening to it.

Making sure no illegal content is downloaded will make your children more responsible and will help them understand the importance of exploring the Internet but keeping the exploration between certain bounds.

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