  The internet is a very valuable tool to have in your home, for business, school work, or even for entertainment. Its value as a research tool is unparalleled in human history. More and more business is being transacted on-line. Every day, more families are getting connected. Despite its unquestionable value, there are dangers you need to be aware of. We'll fill you in on some of them here, highlighting some of the problems that can arise, their consequences, and some things you can do to protect yourself and your computer. Viruses Viruses are a very real danger. These small programs can come attached to other computer files, such as games and documents that you might load from a floppy disk. But most often they will appear as email attachments, often sent unknowingly by an aquaintance. New viruses are constantly appearing, and the damage they do is very real. A virus in your computer can do many things, and often they're not good things. They usually destroy files, and will mail themselves to everyone in your email address book the next time you go on-line. When you discover you have a virus, it is probably too late to save everything; while it can probably be eradicated completely, you may lose some files in the process, and may even lose everything on your computer. Eradicating a virus will mean a trip to your local computer service center and a hefty bill. (Many viruses will prevent your computer from accessing internet sites designed to deal with them, so you won't be able to get help online). But you can avoid these problems with some simple protection. You need good anti-virus software installed on your computer, and it should be set to update itself every week with new virus information. It should automatically check floppies you insert in your computer, and it must automatically check your email when you download it. A good product that does all of this is Norton Antivirus; this latest version can be purchased and downloaded directly from their site, and is easy to install. Even with this protection, new viruses are popping up every day, so it is important to remember that you should never open an attachment to an email from someone you don't know, and if you're at all suspicious, delete it and ask the person who sent it to explain what it was and send it again. Email attachments from friends should be well explained; if they aren't, delete them first and ask later! [Return to Index] Junk Email When you surf the web, you are often prompted to give your email address. Sometimes the website will obtain it from your hard drive without your knowledge! Quite often, the owners of these websites will sell your email address to marketing companies, who are willing to pay money for addresses of real people. After a while, your email in-box will regularly be deluged with junk email, called 'spam'. It's equivalent to the mass of flyers that appear in your regular mailbox along with your ordinary mail. There is no harm in this, except that you will have to wade through a mass of advertising every time you want to check your email. But there are several things you can do to make the problem less annoying. First, never give out your real email address, if you can help it. Get an anonymous address from a service such as Hotmail, and use that one instead as a 'throw-away' address whenever you're asked for an email address. If this mailbox starts filling up with spam every time you open it, just get a new one. But some websites that require your address won't accept free anonymous addresses like Hotmail. This is especially true if you're attempting to purchase something on-line with a credit card. They want to know your real address. However, they are just as likely as any other site to turn around and sell your address (business is business, after all), so you will want to be prepared. Look for a policy statement, probably near the bottom of the page, that might indicate whether they will make your address available to others. Don't shop there if they indicate they will. Your internet provider may allow you to set up aliases for your main email address. (Telus does). If your regular address is smithj@telusplanet.net, you can add the alias johnsmith@telusplanet.net, and give out that address. This is a handy feature if your regular address is hard to remember. Make a few of these that you wouldn't ordinarily use, like abcde@telusplanet.net, and when you're asked for your email address, give out that one. If you start getting a lot of junk email, you can get rid of it. Next, never reply to junk mail. They often will ask you to click on a link to remove yourself from their list, but this is usually just a ploy to see if the email address is real. Once you reply, the value of your address when they sell it goes up! And you won't be removed! Finally, learn to use your email filters. You can set up filters in your email software to automatically delete mail from addresses you specify, or mail that contains certain words (like 'YOU TOO can get out of DEBT PAINLESSLY ... by sending us $29.95'). Then you'll never see these messages. It's not foolproof, and it takes some time, but it will definitely cut down the amount of junk mail that makes it to your inbox. You can also report spammers. If the last part of their email address ends in a recognizable domain, such as 'hotmail.com', or 'usa.com', or 'telusplanet.net', you can forward the message to these domains and they may remove the spammer from their service. The address to forward the junk mail to is usually abuse@, as in 'abuse@hotmail.com'. [Return to Index] Cookies and 'Spyware' Cookies are small bits of text information that a website you visit can install on your hard drive, automatically, without you knowing it. This is fairly harmless, and can even be useful. It tells the website you visit that you've been there before, and will store any information about you that you willingly gave the site. It may also record which pages on their site you visit. Sites do this so they can personalize your visit, and tailor their banner ads to their customers. Often the ads you see on their pages will be based on information they got from you last time; for example, if you visit Amazon.com looking for books about skiing, the next time you return, you may see a lot of ads about ski books or equipment. The site read the cookie on your drive. Generally this sort of behaviour is harmless. You may be tempted to 'turn off cookies' in your browser (it will let you prevent this activity), but you shouldn't. Many sites use cookies on a routine basis, and you won't be able to load those pages properly if your cookies aren't working. Incidentally, it is possible for a website to read the names of all the files on your computer, as well as the registered owner of the computer. Your email address can also be accessed this way. However, a site cannot read the content of your files, and may not legally tamper with any of these files. Nevertheless, unscrupulous sites (probably run by creators of viruses) can do damage to your computer, ranging from something as simple as purposely crashing your browser to something as deadly as a virus attack. Although sites like this are rare, they do exist. More insidious are programs called 'spyware' which are hidden in other programs you have installed (usually ones downloaded for free from the internet), and that sit on your hard drive and monitor your internet activity, recording the addresses of sites you visit. Then they send all this information to their parent company while you are on-line. This activity happens all the time, in the background, while you are on-line, even though you are not running the program itself. Harmless? Maybe. But some of us like our privacy, and don't like the idea of programs doing sneaky things behind our backs. Moreover, the monitoring portions of these programs, being 'always on', are using up valuable memory in your computer. We recommend a product called Zone Alarm. You can get it on-line from the Zone Labs site; it can be set to run whenever you go on-line, and will only allow information into and out of your computer that you allow. It will let you identify programs that are sending information behind your back, (and stop the activity), and will prevent malicious attacks on your computer from outside sources. [Return to Index] Harmful, Illegal, or Otherwise Nasty Internet Sites There are billions of web pages on-line, and many of them are full of good stuff. But there's a lot of nasty stuff out there too. All the stories you've heard about pornography, hate literature, or bomb-building instruction manuals are true. When you are on the internet, you are probably only a few clicks away from material that you would probably classify as disgusting, perverted, or illegal. With a little care and concern, this can not necessarily cause you a problem. When your family walks into a bookstore, you are only a few steps away from some of the same material. The same is true whenever you enter a large public library. What's needed is a little common sense. At Worsley School OnLine we recommend that younger children not use the internet without the direct supervision of an adult. Material they might come across by accident, even legitimate information, could be disturbing to them. Teenagers must be made aware of what they may accidentally come across, and you must be able to trust that they can deal with this in an appropriate manner. You must be able to trust that your son or daughter will not actively seek out this objectionable material, and that if they should come across it by accident, they will 'get out' right away. It's all a matter of trust. The same kind of trust you exercise when they drive off with a friend on a Friday night. If you have that trust, then surfing the internet does not need to cause you a problem. (We do not recommend filtering software to prevent children from visiting certain sites. Most of these programs have been shown to have hidden agendas (political as well as social) and censor just as many good sites as bad ones. And the average computer-literate 10 year old can circumvent them without working up a sweat.) Your younger children should not use the internet without you sitting beside them, and if you cannot trust older ones on-line, then they shouldn't be allowed access to the internet. [Return to Index] Chat Rooms Internet chat rooms are web pages where many users can interact in real time, usually by typing messages to each other. Occasionally voice and even video can be used, if your computer and phone line support them. Generally they are a harmless and fun way to meet people on-line. What is important to remember is that the people on the other end are anonymous, and probably aren't who they say they are. There are unscrupulous people who like to hang around the larger chat rooms, hoping to strike up a conversation with the gullible, and do them some harm. As long as you do not give out real personal information, nothing bad is likely to happen. Moreover, if you live in a small isolated community (like Worsley), you don't have a lot of the worries that a parent in a large city has, where the person in the chat room could very well be the weirdo on the next block. Nevertheless, anyone using a chat room needs to know that it is never a good idea to reveal your real full name or address or other personal information in a chat room; as long as that simple precaution is taken, chat rooms can be treated as harmless fun. [Return to Index] My Space Recently a new type of website has become very popular; MySpace is just one example. These sites are a place where people can post information about themselves, and meet others with similar interests. For safety, it is important that students do not post personal contact information about themselves or friends, as anyone anywhere can read what is written. Moreover, just as with chat rooms, the person on the other end may not be the person you think they are. Parents should regularly monitor what is being posted. [Return to Index] Instant Messaging There are a variety of programs that allow users to chat back and forth in real time (in text, audio or video). MSN Instant Messager is just one of these. The same rules apply here as for sites like MySpace; students should not reveal personal information, and parents should monitor what is being said. In addition, parents might want to sit down with their child and ask them to tell what they know about each one of their contacts in their 'buddy list'. Ask to see some recent text converstions. Have them block any contacts whom you find objectionable. [Return to Index] If you have other concerns that have not been discussed here, or would like to respond to something you have read, we would like to hear from you. Just . We value your input. (And no, we will not sell your email address. Honest!) Note to Parents: Our School Division blocks many of the sites discussed above; students cannot access Hotmail, instant messaging or MySpace on school computers. They do that at home. |