Computer safety tips

Using your computer can be educational, enjoyable and otherwise beneficial in many aspects. However, care must be exercised at all times since there are people who get enjoyment or profit from finding ways to get into your computer for the fun of doing harm or to steal your personal information. You can, and must, take steps to protect your computer and yourself from the attempts to invade your system. There are some simple steps that you can take to try to protect yourself.

Use "strong" passwords to gain access to your computer whenever possible. You can read about "strong" passwords by clicking on the attached link.

NEVER give your password to anyone over the phone or through e-mail. Legitimate companies will NEVER ask for your password under any conditions. If someone asks for your password while talking on the phone, hang up. If someone asks for your password in an e-mail, delete the e-mail.

Do not respond to e-mails that are not properly addressed to you. There are people that try to learn legitimate e-mail addresses and will send out hundreds of thousands of e-mails in hopes of learning legitimate addresses that can be sold to spammers.

Do not open attachments that come with e-mail messages unless you are certain you know the person that sent you the message and the attachment was actually sent by them for a purpose. Sophisticated miscreants can spoof an e-mail address, making you think it came from someone you know, and embed the attachment with various types of viruses or other harmful instructions for your computer.

Use Anit-Virus software and keep it updated. There are many good programs to choose from and most of the major anti-virus softward companies will allow you to configure your computer for automatic updates. New viruses are developed regularly, so daily updates can help keep you protected.

Install security patches as they are announced. Operating system (such as Windows) vulnerabilities are constantly being discovered and the software companies try to resolve vulnerabilities as quickly as they can.

Use a Firewall. No internet connection is safe without a firewall, and it takes only minutes for a non-firewalled computer to be infected.

Keep abreast of internet scams or hoaxes. Refer to our page of some of these attempts.

Be careful about personal information, including names of relatives, addresses, etc. posted on public sites such as Facebook and MySpace. This information is available to virtually anyone, but more importantly, once posted the information remains forever.