Using the internet safely(art12)

Ok you should have read my earlier articles before you read this, as at this point you should have an isp(internet service provider) a pc with antivirus and firewall and have updated your operating system such as windows xp.The next thing to do is to get an alternative to the internet explorer browser( the big blue letter e icon which says internet explorer underneath the big blue e with a lopsided kind of halo going around it on your desktop) i recommend the firefox 1.0.4 browser from mozilla which was released on 12 may 2005 its 4.6mb to get from download.com, as its not made my microsoft it doesnt get attacked anywhere near as much as ie does so its safer to use.Quite often its nessessary to get a newer version of a browser as they are constantly being updated to fix any flaws or vulnerabilitys found in them ill always tell you on my blogg when a newer version of a browser is available so your always up to date recently firefox has released 3 or 4 improvements within just a couple of months so kepping up to date is a constant battle but an essential thing to do, firefox can import your ie bookmarks for you so you wont need to bookmark all your favorite websites again.Id recommend using firefox as much as possible only use ie(internet explorer) when the site you want to look at wont work in firefox, most sites will work in firefox as its based on the netscape browser which was once the most popular browser until microsofts business tacktics nearly destroyed it.Netscape browser is another you could use intead of firefox or if you want get both and try them out on different days. Next youll need antispyware software, this removes malware which is items that spy on your websurfing activities and internet use.You get infected by malware/spyware by visiting a website run by unethical businnesses or criminals not just adult websites but any website you may find on the internet by using a search engine,the most innocent looking website can have nastys hidding in links you click on for example saying its doing something like taking you to another page when really in the background iunseen to you its transfering spyware into your pc! also ,via instant messenger links from unknown people can be dodgy and there are any number of other ways spyware gets into your pc, also some software attaches spyware to the main programme you wanted so that they will give it to you free eg kazaa the file sharing software people use to swap music and films comes packaged with gain and cydoor..these programmes watch your surfing and then display popup adverts similar to what you were after so say you go to a competitions website gain may then popup its own advert displaying a competition for you to enter..its a huge invasion of privacy.Spyware is also such things as keystroke loggers which are small bits of software criminals place into your pc to record everything you type so they can steal your passwords and creditcard numbers for example...these are one of the worst things you can get because obliously you can end up having your bank account cleaned out if you bank online and criminals get your passwords! this is perhaps the biggest reason people will not trust online shopping as well as having someone else go on a spending spree with your credit card right up to its creditlimit because even with a fully updated operating system with up to date antivirus and firewall spyware will still gets into your pc simply by being conected to the internet its very scarry and the government needs to catch the taking the scumbags that release spyware and punish then with community work for the rest of their lives. Another type of spyware is dialers which can change the phone number your pc is using if you use a dialup connection to access the net these can then change your pc from dialling your isp to dialling a premium phone number such as a £1.50 a minute number in some far off country so the criminals who placed the dialer in your pc make a fortune at your expense( any isp worth using should give you software to warn you when your number is being changed, bt in hte uk have only just started to offer this protection to their customers).to guard against these threats you must get antispyware software such as adaware se made by lavasoft which again you get from download.com once installed read the instructions! then update it by clicking the update button itll connect to the internet and download the latest deffinitions of spyware it can detect and remove then do a full system scan just like antvirus itll go through all the files in your pc to find bad things itll tell you to get rid of, itll take about 20-25 minutes to do( most antispyware programmes take about this long to do) when finished it lists all the things it recommends you remove if you right click your mouse when over some of the things it lists youll get a drop down menu if you select select all all the nastys its found get ticked off in 1 go always look through what its going to remove if theres something you want to keep untick the box next to it, so if you had kazaa you need to keep gain and cydoor because if you remove them kazaa stops working for example.Once youve ticked off the stuff you dont want click the remove button and adaware quarentines all the nastys it found so your pc will be cleaned up.I also recommend you get a programme called spybot search and destroy 1.3 from download.com this is another spyware remover thats free again once you have it read the instructions and update it and then scan your pc with it you may find it finds a few different nastys that adaware didnt detect( its like having a filthy carpet and using a hoover brand vacuum on it this removes say 97% of the dirt and dust and hair, if you then used a vax vacuum on the same area it would probably still find a tiny amount of dirt and if you then used a dyson vacuum again it may find a few more different things...if you wanted a totally clean carpet you would do this) again once run itll show you a list of what it found which you tick off what you want removed and it should remove these for you,ocassionally a piece of spyware is difficult to remove and you may be advised by your anti spyware programme to resart your pc and run a scan with it again usually after the second scan itll be able to remove the nasty thing for you..rarely a 3rd scan is needed but you have to do all this if you want to be able to shop online or bank online, a friend of mine got me to do all this for him to teach him what to do adawre se found loads of spyware on his laptop which it removed straight after we used spybot search and destroy 1.3 and it found 2 0r 3 things more it removed so my friend was very pleased with me for cleaning his pc i then said ive tried another antispyware programme in the past that was good called webroot spysweeper 3.5 so we got that and ran it and it found 1 keystroke logger even after we had used the other 2 programmes! now either this was a false positive( a false result saying the pc it just scanned was infected with a keystroke logger or the other 2 programmes totally missed this nasty so i recommend you also try webroot spysweeper 3.5 which you get from download.com..this is a free 30 day trial if after using it you think it finds different stuff to adaware se and spybot search and destroy pay for it its about $30 for a year i think.There are many more antispyware products available but the 3 ive just told you about are the best ive come across so far so try them all out..without them it is not safe to bank online or shop online FULLSTOP and any website asking you to shop with them that doesnt teach you to do this isnt worth shopping with..any website that wants to link to my website may do so if you want to help your customers to learn to protect there computers, once they know what to do and have followed all the steps i tell them to do you should be able to shop online safely in confidence, so if your website wants more sales link to www.beingahuman.blogspot.com saying something like read this websites internet shopping articles, articles number 12,10 etc to learn how online shopping can be done safely, also any other publication be it a website,newspaper or magazine etc that wants to publish one of my articles can for a reasonable fee otherwise obviously all content on this site is copyrighted so without agreed payment you may not use my articles. write to yellowmoon@fsmail.net with the subject line we want your articles. ill get back to you to discuss fees and rewrites etc.
Other software i recommend you get includes flash player from macromedia version 7.0.19.0 is the latest available on the macromedia website, this is needed to play graphics on m,any websites such as to show moving images or games it enhances some websites youll visit often when you first go to a website that has macromedia aplications on it itll tell you you need to get flashplayer to view the site your on..always make sure the site your on is trustworthy because when you click there link to take you to the macromedia website they couls send you to a fake site where youll download god knows what so make sure you obtain flashplayer from macromedia.com.Next get freeram xp from download.com this software refreshes your pcs memory at time intervals you set in the setting section such as every 15 minutes try to free 200 mb ram if you had 512mb ram in total, the more free memory you have the faster website pages load and the faster your pc will run, again this is a free programme i highly recommend it also helps prevent your pc crashing because when you use memory zapping programmes like p2p file sharing eg kazaa this uses up loads of memory and if your memory fills up and goes towards zero being free this can cause your pc to freeze up(known as crashing) and your pc will seem stuck or you may get a blue screen requiring you to shut the pc off and restart it often itll then come back on in safemode requiring a bit of messing about to get it back to its normal settings so get a ram freeing tool such as freeram xp. If you fill in a lot of forms on the internet such as your name and address and phone number(most website require this info from you these days for you to access them so they know whos using their site)or if like me you enter lots of competitions or ask for freebies..free samples of products you can save yourself a lot of time and effort by getting roboform form download.com this software you type in your personal details to once then it attache sitself to your browser and has a little green icon in the bottom right of your pc you can click on and itll fill in forms for you with just a couple of clicks! so if that sounds of use to you try it unfortunately its ability to also fill in passwords and user names for sites you use reguarly is limited to just 10 sites in its free setting but if you pay itll remember passwords for far more sites,but the firefox browser i told you about earlier remembers passwords and usernames for the sites you want so theres anothe reason to use firefox! right thats it for this article go get the programmes ive told you to get theyll protect your pc and make using the internet for shopping and banking far less worrying, if your going to shop online before any shopping begins run your antivirus and remove all viruses/trojans and worms they find run your antispyware programmes(use all the programmes you have be that adaware se, spybot search and destroy and webroot or any others u decide to try) only when your sure your pc is totally clean of viruses and spyware can you begin shopping untill you have done all my previous recommendations you are not safe to shop online ill tell you of yet more things you need to consider when shopping online in my next article..remember dont worry or get stressed you can complete all the steps ive told you to do in far less time than you are probably assuming itll take you so get to it and remember once youve taken these steps the real fun begins once you start shopping online a whole new world opens up to you and youll start saving a fortune off the prices you used to pay for items so until my next article goodluck & goodbye .