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E-mail Security:
One thing, which every e-mail user should do, is protect his/her e-mail with a good anti-virus program. Norton Anti-virus has an auto-protect feature, which sits in your system tray and monitors any suspicious activity. Make sure that e-mail protection is enabled in its options, and it will automatically scan your incoming e-mail and warn you against thousands of virii and worms in the mail. When a virus is found, it can attempt to repair it for you, if repair is not possible it can quarantine the files so that they become unusable. A decision can be made later, by showing the infected files to an expert. An even better practice is to save your attachments on your hard drive and scan them before you run anything.
The virus scan option now is also available with popular web-based e-mail services now. Hotmail scans every mail attachment for virus with a McAfee anti-virus system. I suggest you still scan the attachment after download since I know Trojans that Hotmail’s virus scanner misses out on!
An amazing feature of the Internet is that users tend to believe everything they receive in their mailboxes. If you use e-mail, I can bet you have received messages tempting you to forward them to your friends. They claim that all your wishes will come true or that you will get paid by Microsoft for every message that you forward. The reasons for doing that can be different but what they really aim at is getting valid e-mail addresses so that you can be targeted for “Spam”. DO you get loads of unsolicited e-mail in your mailbox and wonder how on earth did they get your address? Well, now you know how. Vmyths is a good site with a lot of information on hoaxes on the Net. If you are already receiving loads of junk e-mail, use Spam-blocking software. Spammer Slammer, for example is a great program that marks your e-mail for Spam which can be filtered using your standard e-mail client.
Web Security:
Undoubtedly, the most engaging part of the Internet is the World Wide Web (WWW). Most people are unaware of the information that mere browsing can reveal about you. The sites you visit can detect our IP (Internet protocol) addresses, which can in turn give them a clue about your location. Your browser can silently send information about the previous site that you were visiting and possibly your e-mail address to the server. This might not seem to be a big problem for some but you should at least be aware of the possibilities. You can find information about this on Anonymizer.
Cookies are simple text files that some sites save on your Hard disks so that information contained in them can later be requested through the browser. This has been a topic of discussion with experts who promote privacy on the internet since this same technique can be used to get more information about your browsing habits. Some sites will store your password in these files so you might not want to use these if someone sniffs around on your system. To have complete control on who saves what on your Hard disk, you can use programs that monitor the storage of such files on your system. Cookie Pal is one such program, which enables you to selectively allow some sites to store cookies while preventing others from doing so. While checking your mail on Hotmail, or any web based e-mail for that matter, always select the available security options. Hotmail has a security option that you can select in order to expire the cache as you view your mail. Simply stated, this means that if someone sits on the same computer after you and tries to go “back” in the browser, he would not be able to see your inbox. A similar option exists for NetAddress too.
An interesting phenomenon on the Internet is that users tend to believe everything that they see. You might be surprised to know that even URLs can be obscured. I once received e-mail on my Hotmail account, which was apparently a BlueMountain greeting card. Since there was no mention of the sender’s name, I became suspicious. The text of the link did seem to point to the Bluemountain’s site but clicking on it did not take me anywhere. Examination of the page source revealed that the link was actually pointing to an advertisement banned and the owner of a certain site got paid every time I clicked on that link. No harm done, but when I thought of other possibilities, this can turn out to be really mischievous! Lucking the solution is as simple as the problem itself. If you do not trust the source of information, just copy the link and open it in a new window so that you know where you are heading.
Internet Relay Chat (IRC)
IRC is probably one service where most people suffer the “believe everything you see” dilemma. I will not go into technical details of how IRC channels can be exploited. For an average internet user, what is important is to protect his/her system from intruders. There are people out there who would try to deceive you into accepting files through which they can take over your IRC session or “overhear” your conversation
The most common script that floats on IRC channels nowadays is “script.ini”. It spreads through DCC file transfer and runs command without user intervention. The basis of the problem is that mIRC, a popular IRC client can execute a script named “script.ini” without even asking you. But what it does ask is your permission to transfer the file. So now you know what to do when you get a DCC transfer request for this file – DENY IT!
In a Nutshell:
When you are on the Internet, keep your eyes open and don’t let people fool you. For more “innovative” minds, spend your time in realizing constructive ideas rather than wasting other people’s time. Peace to the netizens!
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