The
Internet can be a dangerous and confusing place. Without the
proper know how, you may end up buying land on the moon, or having your identity stolen, or worse, you may find yourself bored. The
Internet has
infinite potential to keep you entertained and occupy your time, but it can also be a place of horrible
unpleasantness. So, to keep you safe from being bored or unhappy, I offer you these tips on how to survive the
Internet.
Lesson 1: Keeping yourself safe.
There are a bunch of idiots in the world. It seems that they multiply on the
Internet. It boggles my mind why people go out of their way to create viruses whose sole purpose is to kill someone e
lse's computer. Yet, they exist, and they probably think that they are pretty funny. Then there are people who don't have lives and so feel the need to steal someone e
lse's life. And then there are people who really want you to visit their site, and so they bombard you with pop-ups. If you don't have the proper
software, the
Internet can be incredibly dangerous. Therefore, you need to protect your computer with antivirus,
anti-spyware, and pop-up blockers. This can be a pain, but just think about how miserable you would be without it.
So that's important, but
that's not all you need to do. There are other ways people can steal your identity. There are sites called
Phisher sites. They will
phish for you. Say you get an email from a website that you have subscribed to or joined or something. That email says to click the link and log in. This can be a trap. The mail could have been sent by a
phisher, and when you click the link, you go to what looks like the site, but its really a clever ruse. You would then put your info into the site, but its not the site, and you didn't just log in. Someone just stole your
user name and password. You have been
phished. If you get an email from a site that says click this link to go to our site, it would be safer to go to the sites main page and log in there.
You email address is very important. Be careful where you give it out. But don't be paranoid either. If a site asks for it, look at their private policy if you are concerned. In fact, that goes for any website that is asking about your information. Read their private policy if you feel concered about why they are asking stuff about you. If they don't have a private policy, then you probably shouldn't trust them. Also, chain letters are a primary target for people to get email addresses. If you look at those, you can find hundreds of addresses after its been passed on a bit. So, don't send chain letters. Honestly, they are some of the most pointless things on the
Internet, and that is saying a lot. If you feel that you must, there is a way to send an email and not pass on any email addresses. Instead of putting the email addresses of the people your sending it to in the TO: line, but them in the
BCC: line.
BCC stands for Blind Carbon Copy. You could send an email to hundreds of people, and they would never know. Spam companies can do nothing with an empty TO: line.
Just some things to keep in mind. I may or may not add more to this lesson, but for now,
that's all. The next lesson will be less serious and more fun :)
