The Top Twelve Threats No Computer User Should Ignore 

The internet is undoubtedly a fantastic resource for 
families and offers a rich vein of educational content. 
However, there are potential dangers - welcome to the 
seedy world of viruses, spam, trojans, pornography, spyware 
and other nasties. 

Here are the Top Twelve Threats No Computer User Should 
Ignore: 

1. Viruses - A computer program that copies itself. They 
often disrupt your computer system or damage your data. 
Viruses are usually received by email attachments so be 
careful opening anything from a dubious source. They can 
affect anyone, for example, the destructive Mydoom worm 
affected one out of three small and mid-sized businesses. 

2. Spyware - Sends information about you and your computer 
to somebody else. Spyware may send the addresses of sites 
you have visited or worse still, transmit personal 
information. With today's concerns about identify theft 
this is a real worry. For example, CoolWebSearch may hijack 
web searches, home page, and other Internet Explorer 
settings. Spyware is normally received as part of shareware 
or freeware downloaded from the web. 

3. IP Spoofing - A technique to gain unauthorized access 
to computers, whereby the intruder sends messages to a 
computer with an address indicating that the message is 
coming from a trusted host. 

4. Trojans - An apparently legitimate computer program 
that is really intended to disrupt and damage computer 
activity by sending information, perhaps even passwords 
onto a third party without you knowing. As an example, 
recent emails entitled "Osama Bin Laden Captured" attempted 
to download the "Trj/Small.B." Trojan if the embedded URL 
was clicked. This trojan attempts to hijack the PC. 

5. Spam - Unsolicited mail often promoting products of a 
dubious financial or sexual nature. Don't leave your email 
address on websites and internet bulletin boards as they 
are harvested by spammers. 

6. Adware - puts advertisements on your screen. These take 
many forms including popups, popunders and advertisements 
that appear later, even if your browser is closed. Some are 
sent using the Windows Messenger service which allows a 
spammer to direct an advertisement straight to your 
computer by sequentially sending messages to IP addresses. 
Always irritating, they are also often of a pornographic 
nature. 

7. Diallers - for those of us still with dial up modems, 
dialler programs redirect calls to a very expensive number. 
You won't know until you get the bill. 

8. Hijackers - Hijackers take control of your web browser 
and may reset your home page, search bar and search pages. 
They can redirect you to undesirable sites or stop you 
going to particular sites. 

9. Hackers - With so much personal data available online 
to anyone with a password you must be sure your password is 
secure. If you are using your mother's maiden name, your 
cat's name or your birthday then your password is at risk. 
Here are two tips for making a secure password. Method One - 
pick two random unrelated three letter words and two 
digits. Mix them up and what do you have? A secure password 
such as "red19cat" or "hotpin73". Method Two - pick a short 
sequence of words such as Now Is The Winter Of Our 
Discontent Made Glorious' and you have a password of 
"nitwoodmg". You could even change the I's and O's to 
digits. 

10. Phishing - Emails purporting to come from reliable 
sources such as Paypal, Ebay or your bank. Often wanting 
you to verify your account details, they can look very 
realistic but are generally scams to harvest usernames and 
passwords. Always open a new browser winder and type the 
address there, rather than clicking on the link provided. 

11. Hoaxes - Chain letters, scams, false alarms. At best 
they take up time and bandwidth but at worst vulnerable can 
be victims of fraud. Pass it on! 

12. Stranger-danger - For those of us with children - do 
you know what they actually do when they are online? Are 
they working on homework tasks, downloading illegal music 
or pornography? Or are they chatting to strangers in chat 
rooms? You should consider blocking access to undesirable 
sites and logging their activity with a surveillance tool. 
Oh, and don't forget that where children are concerned, 
computers should always be kept in a family room and never 
in their bedroom. 

Three Step Action Plan 

There are three essential steps that should be taken to 
ensure your PC is kept threat-free. 

Firstly, be sensible when opening attachments or following 
email instructions from apparently reputable sites. 

Secondly, make sure you are using the latest service pack 
of Windows as Microsoft is continually closing loopholes to 
tighten up security. 

Finally, there's a range of low cost tools such as 
firewalls, antivirus, spam blockers and spyware killers 
available. Like everything else they vary in quality and 
you tend to get what you pay for so always do your research 
first and perhaps try a free trial before getting your 
credit card out. 

http://www.surfcontrols.com specializes in providing 
reviews and recommendations of top-rated tools to help 
protect your online experience. There's a quick reference 
list to dozens of top sites promoting different aspects of 
safe surfing packed with useful information and there's 
also a great set of top tips for safe surfing. 

Copyright Kai Chandler (#12t5109) 


About the author:
Kai Chandler is a project manager and journalist 
particularly interested in tools and techniques to protect 
his family and computer against spam, porn, viruses and 
malware. As a father of two he is keen to ensure that 
his children enjoy a safe surfing surfing experience. His 
reviews of the very best parental internet filters, 
anti-virus, anti-spam, anti-spyware and surveillance tools 
are at http://www.surfcontrols.comIt's essential reading 
for any parent and computer owner.

Computer microphones are a valuable addition to any PC and they greatly increase interactivity and communication levels. You can use a microphone for performing various tasks, both business and fun related. For example, you can hold a conference with your business partners, over the Internet, or you can chat with your friends online, instead of doing that on the phone. Of course, in order to enjoy accurate and high quality communication, you have to choose a good PC microphone. There is a huge variety of models on the market, ranging from microphones that you can buy for a few dollars and going all the way to expensive, high tech desktop microphones. So which PC microphone is right for you? 

Price Vs Quality 

You can pay $5 for a microphone, or you can pay $50. So where’s the difference, apart from the price? Well, cheap microphones have low prices for some good reasons: they offer average to low quality sound, they break down more easily and you can’t use them successfully in all applications that support a microphone. The materials they are manufactured from have to be cheap, which eliminates the idea of high quality, so the end product is of lower reliability. And at this price, you can be sure bulk manufacturing is present and quality tests are quick and far from rigorous. Microphones that come for a higher price have, in most cases, better sound quality and more features. Such microphones will have noise canceling filters, which help diminish background noise. Distortion filters and integrated circuits also help keep voice sounds clear and accurate. The materials used for more expensive microphones also last longer – plastic doesn’t crack so easily and if you drop it on the floor you know that the internal components are well protected. 

Choosing the right computer microphone 

Determining what price range you are in and what model to purchase depends heavily on the purpose you have in mind for the microphone. Are you going to use it just to chat with friends online? In that case, spending a lot of money on a professional computer microphone is not justified. Do you plan to hold business conferences over the Internet? Then maybe you should get a better microphone that will allow the discussion to be continuous and clear, without noise distortion. Giving vocal commands to your computer or dictating to word processing software with speech recognition capabilities is another use for desktop microphones. Quality should be first here – speech recognition software is very sensitive and demands a high quality microphone and sound card. Recording your voice and inserting it into music tracks is possible, but a high quality microphone is absolutely essential in this case.