How to use the internet (my 10th article overall)

Ok so ive explained what a browser does briefly in article 9, at this point im asuming you have a pc and a internet connection the next step you must take is to get some firewall software, i recomend a programme called zonealarm which you can download from download.com by typing zonealarm into the search box on download.com the latest version is called zonealarm 5.5.094.000 it is just 6.8megabites in size so itll take just 1 0r 2 minutes to download onto your pc.Once youve selected zonealarm from downloads website click the download button and then the save button on the grey pop up box asking what you want to do with the file, the software gets sent to your pc, when this is completed click the open button and follow the simple instructions which tells you where on your pc the software will be saved.Zopnealarm gives you a 15 day trial of its pro version which is worth trying out it has a few more features than the free version but once 15 days have gone by it asks you if you want to buy the pro version or change the software youve downloaded to the free version, i find the free version is perfectly good at doing what a firewall should do which is protecting yopur pc from hackers(people who try to break into your pc over the internet to disrupt or damage or steal your data in your pc or to take control of yopur pc to use it for there own purposes usually to attack a businesses website to extort money from them.This is called a denial of service attack(doss) what they do is get thousands of comprimised pcs..anyone without a firewall will have bad software placed into their pc and in the background without anything going on you can see your infected pc keeps sending requests to the website the hackers are targeting,when many thousands of pcs do this at the same time the servers(machines that send out the information for a website..sending you pages of information to your browser to display) will overload and cant handle the number of requests its recieving and the website will crash( will stop working thus taking the website out of action for a while and loosing that company loads of money in lost sales.Many hackers also will use your pc to send out spam emails(junk unwanted unasked for emails most people dont want many of which can contain offensive material of viruses), zonealarm protects your pc from all this rubbish getting onto your pc so get it, mine stopped 37,000 acess atempts to my pc in just 6 weeks!.Once you have got zonealarm installed any other programmes on your pc that want to access the internet whether its your browser or antivirus or antispyware etc, when they first try to send or recieve info to your pc a small window apears asking if you want to let that programme have access to the internet..if its a programme you are wanting to use click yes to allow it to do what it wants to do but if its something you werent going to use right now or you dont recognise the name of the programme trying to access the net deny it access..if you read the zonealarm instructions theyll explain it all for you. Next you need an antivirus software programme..what this does is detect viruses and trojan horses and worms getting onto your pc in the first place it can also detect thses nasty things if theyve gotten into your pc and any good antivirus should be able to remove these damaging things for you.Again got o download.com and type avg antivirus in the search box.. select the latest version of AVG antivirus which is free and is version 7.289 made by grisoft and first relesed on 2.12.2004 its 9.69mb(megabites) to download so on broadband 1mb speed itll take about 2 0r 3 minutes to get...each time i tell you to get software from download.com its nearly always the same steps you take to get it..select the correct software from the list of software download will show you as there is usually dozens of similar products available for for each type of programme ill advise you to get..so make sure you select the one i tell you to get,im simply telling you of programmes i myself use and recomend,im not on commision for recomending any of these programmes ill tell you about so its genuine advice for beginers or more experienced users to try out to get you started.So once youve selected the correct programme read the review of it and users opinions to get an idea ofd what people whoi have used it have to say about it, if your happy most of the reviews are positive about it(there is always a few negative comments..worth reading and considering their opinions but remember theres so many different makes of computers and people use so many different combinations of software programmes that clashes of these causing errors will happen for a few people,if there are lots of bad reviews of a product well then there may be something wrong with it and its probably good advice to find an alternative from download.com , so back to avg antivirus... click download then save and its transered to you then open it and follow the instructions to install it,avg offers to create a rescue disk but this doesnt work for me it wants to write to your a drive which is the floppy disk drive but most floppy disks only hold 1.44mb of data and avg is tring to back up far more data than this so i skip doing this.Once youve installed it click the update button to get sent the latest antivirus signatures( the latest additins to detect the newest viruses and trojans) once your antivirus is totally up to date run your first scan of your whole pc with it.. this will take about 30 minutes to do..what it does is go through every file in your pc to find any nastys already in your pc, at the end of the scasn itll list all the bad stuff its found and you can then remove these, again read the help section of avg if you get a virus or trojan that proves difficult to remove..any good antivirus should at lease explain how to remove something if the software has difficulty and often itll give tips on avoiding getting this type of virus or trojan again.You get viruses/trojans/worms from websites you visit that arent run by law abiding people, you may well find a site by using a search engine like google.com but the results of relevant info to what you are after cant warn you if that site is safe to use or not, also email attachments( photos/graphics/documents attached to an email for you to open up to see) can contain viruses etc so any email account you set up should have its own built in virus scanner for you to scan any attachment that is sent to you to warn if it contains a virus ..ill recomend email accounts later on.Most antivirus products can detect about 85-90,000 differnet types of viruses/worms/trojans ! yep using a pc is getting scarry...some viruses are designed to destry every file in your pc so all the digital photos/written documents/video files/music files etc etc thats in your pc can be destryed or damaged by some viruses, many viruses can damage how your pc works so badly that youll need to wipe the hard disk of all its data and start form scratch again..so youd need to get all the software programmes again and configure them all again etc..a real nightmare..so follow my tips to prevent this type of thing happening to you.I recommend you run an antivirus scan at least once a week to keep your pc as clean as possible, if you visit adult sites or use p2p(peer to peer) file sharing networks to illegally steal music and videos youll need to scan your pc every couple of days because these are some of the most dangerous places for picking up infections to your pc.Any antivirus worth using needs to update itself daily at least because people are crating new viruses every day so you need antivirus software thatll detect the very latest viruses, avg does this each day you first go online youll see an avg window apear saying its updating your antivirus. There are many other makes of antivirus around but most charge around £40 ayear for there product, the main makes of antivirus are.. avg by grisoft,computer associates..ca.com,norman.norton by symantec,mcafee,panda,kapersky.command by authentium,avast..another free antivirus product,sophos.com and trend micro.Download.com will list more of them but as its free start with avg then if you genuinly find another product is better get it.The next thing you must do is upadate your operating system(os) most people use microsofts windows products..they have 90% of the worlds pcs running there software and because theyre so widely used there the target for nearly all the hackers/virus writers etc. so if you use windows me/windows 2000/windows xp etc you need to go to start(button in bottom left hand corner of your desktop screen and go to windows update, follow the instructions to update your os..microsoft writes patches(fixes) for all the hundreds of flaws in its products and lets youdownload most of them for free..which they bloody well should considereing they sold you a seriously flawed product in the first place!..once microsoft has scanned your pc to see what updates you need select the ones it recommends and download them, quite often some of these patches once downloaded to you will need you to reboot(restart) your pc so that the changes the patches make to your os stick, this can be time consuming but an unpatched pc is wide open to hackers and virus writers even ifd you have a firewall and antivirus etc! all these steps..getting a firewall/antivirus and updating your os(operating system) can be done in say 1-2 hours if you take your time to read all the instructions and dont rush, if your competent and have doine this type of thing before you can do it far quicker but take your time its not complicated..feel free to print off my instructions if you need to so you can follow them as you go along.My next article will be on all the other software i recommend you get such as anti spyware,free phone calls software, alternative browsers,formfillers,memory freeing tools,mediaplayers,java,popup blockers,document writing software,instant messagers etc but for now do the steps ive explained in this article to protect your pc then come back here for more. remember to bookmark www.beingahuman.blogspot.com so you can come right back to me whenever you like, good luck take care and dont worry you can do it.