The News Pad

First for the Bad News: There are many risks attached to connecting to the Internet. The only way to keep one hundred percent safe is by not connecting! But who wants to do that especially if one’s in business? It is a fact that when you connect to the Internet you will be wide open to attacks. In essence you open up a highway that connects you to it and it to you. Thus anyone on the Net can come directly to your computer. With some trickery and exploitation of the trade, vulnerabilities that exist in Microsoft Windows can let outsiders access your data and cause havoc right in the privacy of your own computer. Such malicious things as viruses, worms and Trojan horses are rapidly increasing and rendering millions of computers easy prey to hackers looking for credit card information, banking passwords and other personal identifications, or to blatant vandals looking to delete files, trash hard drives and do any damage they can – just for the fun of it. The scary thing is that many of these invaders don’t even leave a trace. You don’t even know they’re there or they’ve come to your station! For your computer to be “attacked”, intruders first need to locate your IP address. Using some specialized software programs – readily available on the Web -- they can scan and find and invade your computer. Hackers can get to your computer through a variety of ways, including eMail, chat/messaging services, HTML-based emails with hidden image tags, etc., etc. But, enough of the bad news… Now for the Good News: You can protect yourself. And you can check out your computer for vulnerability levels. All you need is to spend some time getting familiar with what the weaknesses are and how you can protect your computer against them. For a non-technical person like myself, what that means is of course researching and getting information from people who do know what they’re talking about. And that’s the hard part: to come across someone you can trust. That’s what I did. And I was blessed to come across a product that tells and shows how to keep hackers, worms and other germs out of your PC, and how to set up a high level of security against unwanted invasions. What I did learn in the first instance is that you can go to a web site that will give you free tools to test your computer. That’s the first thing you need to do. Well, to my surprise, I found that my security system was pretty good. So that gave me peace of mind. And I found that the reason for this was that I had both a router box and an anti-virus product installed. Each has certain protective characteristics that together make your computer safer. And with my continuous research, I'm also finding other areas for improvement that keep adding to my arsenal of knowledge. So I’m off to read some more about PC security.