Lets discuss a few common best practices for internet safety.

Number one first and foremost.

Never ever use a public PC for anything other than surfing. If you have to sign in then don't. Keyloggers could be tracking your entries and then unscrupulous people could then use that logged information for ID theft and other illegal activities.

Another big pet peeve of mine is the home user with unsecured wireless access points. RTFM RTFM
They very descriptively explain how to enable basic security and hell even new linksys models have a one button security setup on the front of them.....USE IT!

This is a good place to start....any other thoughts on this?

EDIT ADD:

Think of the internet as one huge venerial disease. Would you have unprotected sex with it? Make sure you have protection for your PC and that the vacinations (updates) remain current and up-to-date! Avoid any direct contact to the internet with your PC. Always use a router instead of a DSL or Cable modem. Routers add a hardware level of protection for your home PC. Some ISP's incorrectly refer to a router as a modem so just make sure of what you have before you run out and purchase one. When used together with an internet safety suite of software on your PC you should be pretty safe as long as it is kept up-to-date!

It is really hard to read the screen through the ribbed ones and the sheepskin ones won't stop the viruses. I hear they have a pill though, is it compatible with XP?

God...that did not take long. A TROJAN in PC talk is a bad thing.....stay away from them. USE PC Cillin! Make sure to get the monitors with the grab handle feature for internet viewing pleasure! Also foam and electronics are usually never a good mix...they tend to gunk up the works! Oh Yah....never ever insert a floppy backwards while surfing!

badda bing....

LMAO. The worst part about the pill is that it makes the computer vulnerable to blood clots. Horrid.

In all seriousness, I am a fan of the Spybot S+D as a good, free and hardworking supplement to whatever else you run.

Best free one on the market for sure!
I may even make a little donation for the cause! Cause I use it!

Thankfully, browsing with Firefox, I have little or no problem with things that are usually annoying, let alone the big monsters from the bored geeks with a Napoleon complex.

Of course, like the sewer department, I have Norton working double shifts.

Yep...firefox just the newer version of Mozilla. If you use the older or more obscure browsers they do not have as many hackers attacking them but on the same note AV suppliers also pay less attention to them as well. It's a trade off. The safest method of course would be to surf through a proxy service but I cannot stand any of them.

Back on the internet safety thing.

How well do you trust the IT dude or dudet at your place of work? How do you know they are not harvesting personal data about you and selling it for profit? Most people probably have never even met the IT person that does the work? So should you be using a work PC for personal business? The obvious answer is NO. Aside from wasting company time for personal business a company PC is no safer than a public PC and should be treated as such. Do you share a PC with a co-worker? Is he or she someone you trust implicitly? If not why do you use that PC for personal business? These are very valid and real problems on PC's you do not own but operate on a daily basis. The best practice and piece of advice I can give is do not do anything on a PC you do not own that you do not want used or read by someone else. It will be.

Oh...and here is a big mistake.

Autocomplete and password retention......now there is good security. Hell just give them your money why don't you. If your PC got stolen...you know the one with no password to get into it...how many sites could they log into and purchase stuff with your saved password and credit card information. This is a serious problem with laptops due to their high theft rate. They have Lojack for laptops now with a really cool feature that if that laptop ever goes online you can send a remote erase command to wipe the hard drive while the police are driving there to recover it!

Great point about the IT guy! Most folks do not even acknowledge that their employers have access to Grandma's secret stuffing recipe, let alone their other stuff. I am sure there has to be more than a few unscrupulous ones.

I'm looking to upgrade my Apple-II computer (below) to something in the 1990's at least! The picture tube is going out. Also want a color picture screen on my next computer.

http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en-commons/thumb/4/45/250px-Apple-II. jpg









Just kidding around....

Craig, I miss Castle Wolfenstein! I remember going to a pal's house after school and spending hours in his family's basement bomb shelter playing that game. We were surrounded by corboys of water and cinder blocks, so the mood was set. :0)

Dang...that was a fun one indeed.

Hey Craig...I got a Packard Bell 486SX2 50mhz i'd sell ya. Only paid $2,400.00 new so i'll sell it to ya for say $900.00. Bargain!

Is that $900 including my Apple-II as trade?

Hey DT, I'll kick in a Commodore 64 with a pair of disc drives and a Zenith monochrome orange monitor if that helps Craig get a bargain. :0)

Don't download anything you don't need.

Don't open attachments you are not expecting, mail back a confirmation first.

Don't store your data on the same disk as your OS, no matter which one you happen to be running.

Don't enable macros, scripts, etc... in your office programs.

If you can, don't run Microsoft Office,

Don't run Internet Explorer period. You don't need that page or service that badly, trust me.

Don't run any commercial software unless you absolutely have to.

Don't share a work computer with kids, and don't store data there either.

Don't assume your security tools are really secure. (they aren't, it's all up to you)

Don't store your work in proprietary formats. Use the minimal ones, txt, mp3, mpeg, etc... for storage of creative works.

Don't assume your works will be readable 10 years from now. Print / publish those works you find valuable.

Don't let friends use important computers.

If you don't understand what something is going to do, don't do it until you do.

(That one is tough, but it gets easier quicker than you think --trust me on that one too.)

Don't buy rock bottom crap, the installation and breakdown hassles are never worth it. Value your time at 40 dollars per hour and watch it all add up quick.

Do not depend on computers for basic mental tasks. Continue to use paper, your memory, etc... Computers will not be there when it's gonna matter, but your grey matter will be, or you won't care!

Don't fear change and or new tech. If you follow the other things here, this one will come naturally.

Quit looking at the keyboard to type. Speed and accuracy will come, but you have to work for it. You will not regret this experience. Get a keyboard with all white keys, or scratch them off of the one you have. You will get over it.

Don't run the computer on the floor. It makes a better vacuum than it does a heater!

Don't assume anything is private.

Don't trust your IT guy, have two, or a trusted geek you can bounce things off of.

Don't put computers in your car.

IGNORE PDA's they make your mind feeble. Get an iPod and put your notes in there for reading.

Don't make the mistake of believing that software is anything but enabling technology. Your brain remains the best tool you have --use it.

Don't scrimp on your monitor, or your sound.

Don't scrimp on RAM.

Don't be first on the block for anything that actually matters.

Do use computers with kids. You both learn more than you would otherwise.

Do run a Mac, or Linux, if at all possible.

Do use web services as much as is possible, but keep your data on your own personal drive, just in case.

"Don't trust your IT guy, have two, or a trusted geek you can bounce things off of. "

Hey now...I may resemble that remark! ;~)


One very important thing you forgot......Never Never operate a computer while intoxicated or medicated of both! Drunken posts in forums can make one wish one never born! This actually happened in here last December...remember it well! The night of the drunken poster I call it!

Totally! Computing while drunk can cause loss of reputation as well as data and money!

I spend a fair amount of time (not so much these days) in the IT guy role. I know where you are coming from.

There are lots of good IT people, then there are the rest of them...

Do:

Buy a Mac. Turn on it's firewall. Set it's sharing preferences. Password protect it (on 3 levels if need be). Connect to your router.
Job done. No extra 3rd party software required.

Don't:

Believe emails disguised as from your credit card companies or credit union or ebay or whatever asking for you to update information. Reveal it's code if you're curious, and you will see the real address you're going to. It's easy for the link to say one thing, and really be something else. Like for example http://www.disneyland.com

Avoid Microsoft software if at all possible. If you have a Mac and need to work on .doc files, use Pages. If you need to work on .xls files, use Filemaker Pro, if you need to work on .ppt files use Keynote. The cost of iWork (Pages and Keynote) plus the cost of Filemaker Pro are about the same as Office.

Do: understand that if you buy a Mac and run Windows on it, when it is in that mode it is as vulnerable as any Windows machine to viruses and trojans. understand that Linux/Unix is not for the average user and is not going to make for as user friendly desktop computing experience as a Mac. You can always run the mac like a unix box by just going to the terminal mode if you want to.

Don't confuse / with \

Don't change code in an html or xml document if you don't know what you are doing.

Don't put your coffee down near your laptop or keyboard

Do ask for help. There are no dumb questions about computers. Don't always believe what advice you get unless you really know whom you are listening to.

Never trust a salesman who is going to profit from what you buy. Use salesmen to your advantage by being prepared to ask the hard questions.

If you have to run Windows, don't whine. Windows is a lot easier to manage than in the past. It is definitely not the best OS out there, but it is the most prevalent. Microsoft will continue to attempt to corner you into buying their solutions for your software needs by making it uneasy to get other developers software to work in a friendly manner, but be strong and get what you want. And after every Microsoft update, you will probably have to reset a lot of preferences so your machine works the way you want it to. Of course, this can be avoided by

Buying a Mac

Largely agreed.

At a lower level, simply start learning to run Open Code. This is known as Open Source, Free Software, etc...

These programs are growing in capability and are maintained by people all around the world because they value computing freedom. Their efforts are there for the taking and run on just about any hardware that actually matters. (And quite a few that don't.)

The Mac is a great start down this road, but not the holy grail on it's own. Focus on the Open Code and learn what Open Standards are and what that means over the longer term.

Having done these things, you can run whatever suits your fancy, with few worries over having access to the software upon which your skills depend.

I'm a geek in this way, but it's been well worth it. Give me a box and a net connection and a week and, if it's capable, I'll be doing 90 percent of what I need to do, for only an investment in time.

That's very powerful stuff!

Not everybody is gonna get there, but it's not so hard to ride the coat tails of those doing this stuff. You still get all the bennies without having to shell out dollars just to be able to perform basic computing tasks.

Learn Open Office, Firefox / Mozilla, Audacity, Gimp, etc...

Once this learning is done, you are free to compute on whatever you can find, and you will pay exactly zero dollars to get work done.

When I do get my Mac, I'll spend a few days getting these programs and others setup, then it will be business as usual.

BTW: Doing this is good for another reason as well. If you actually do want that Mac, but fear the transition will be too much, then put these programs on the computer you are running now and get started. Once you feel good about it, then make the jump and things will be a lot easier.

Here's one- Never click on ANY of the buttons of a (spam) popup, not OK, not Cancel. Click the little red X (close) box instead.

Hey Craig--

If you have a colour TV set with a composite video in (i.e. "the little yellow cable", and what TVs don't nowdays I want to know) use it for your Apple IIe, especially if you use a "big screen" (like, 27").......makes everything look Soooooooo much better, especially if you have been using the old green monitors all the time.

'Tis what I do!

"Hey Craig...I got a Packard Bell 486SX2 50mhz i'd sell ya. Only paid $2,400.00 new so i'll sell it to ya for say $900.00. Bargain!"

Darktemper--the model on that PackBell wouldn't happen to be "Force 54CD", would it?

Mine just died about a month ago, R.I.P.!!

One thing that I find annoying from a security perspective is that if you use Hotmail, the default setting on their login page is, "save my e-mail address." If a careless user goes to a public computer and neglects to change this to "Always ask for my e-mail address and password" before logging in, then the next person who uses Hotmail from that computer will see the previous user's e-mail address.

Yep.

That old ease of use thing vs security...

Never ending battle, I'm afraid.

Do buy a Mac for video editing.

Do NOT connect it to the internet for anything. Ever.

Do thank Steve Jobs when you accept your Oscar, Golden Globe or Emmy (or if you're Bill O'Rielly, Polk).

TadC
Never even Click the little X
Alt Ctrl Del end process! Only safe option for popups!

Zak
It was a force something.....did not pay that close of attention as it was flying out the back of the truck at the DUMP!

Hi..I'm a Mac.

nuff said.

Mac & Fry's

Apples and Blackberries

ZAK...remember it was only the Force51 CD...482SX2 50
The upgrade machine the Force54 CD was the whopping 482DX2 66

I just tossed out a huge bag of 30 pin memory simms. 1, 2, 4, and the huge 8 meg chips.

Back in the day 16 meg was stylin!

My Force 54CD was the standard 486DX2/66, but then upgraded to a DX2/90. (Reportedly 486es, in general, could do up to 100MHz.)

Think of it as a sort-of "poor-man's Pentium" but without the math co-processor glitches!! ;o)

Had an un-heard of 16MB of RAM and a 495MB hard drive. (Back in that day, having almost 500 MEGAbytes in your system was like having at least a TERAbyte [1,000 gigabytes] today.....)

Also had the old AZI/Voyetra "Sound 16A" sound card which I still use on occasion in my IBM in its single EISA slot. Is quite a pain to get running properly but for my DOS games it's my only option.....they don't seem to want to be able to address an emulated Sound Blaster PCI card!

(Daddy bought the PB in 1995 at Computer City Supercentre--NOT CompUSA, this was before they came 'round--at Jantzen Beach, $2,400.....and that was withOUT the CPU installed--you had to purchase that seperately! Kind of funny thinking of that today, now you can get a full-blown system that's literally thousands of times more powerful/functional for about $700!!)

Alas, all that became of the old PB54 was just a glorified typewriter.....and in more recent weeks just a pile of scraps and spare disk drives for the IBM........