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Basic Rules of Safe Internet Surfing
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Use protection programs
Rule number one of basic Internet security: arm yourself. Use the best protection programs you can get and don’t spare money while buying them. Good protection works all the time, bad protection doesn’t work at all. A decent firewall, a spyware scanner and a virus scanner are absolute musts to have if you’re going to surf. You need to have them even if you avoid unknown and potentially unreliable websites – some attacks will come to you as e-mail or direct attacks on your PC’s ports!
Upgrade your system and defenses
The Internet is constantly changing. Two-week old virus definitions on your virus scanner are only half as useful as the anti-virus definitions updated yesterday. A month old one is almost useless. Keep all your security programs updated. The same story is true with your operating system – as many scumware programs use holes in the system’s security, it is important to have the newest version possible.
Trust no one
Cheating on the Internet is extremely easy. A young 20-year old student can really be a 50-year old housewife, an excellent business opportunity can be (and probably is) a fake and the simple submission of your credit card number to confirm that you’re over 18 – could be identity theft. Don’t be afraid of being hesitant or reluctant in giving away any personal information or meeting people you’ve met on the Internet. There’s no telling what’s really going on.
Look for the small print
Even if the pages you visit don’t break the law openly, always watch for the small print before you agree on anything (simply clicking “YES” is almost as good as your signature). The key phrases are “this is only an example” (means there’s no telling what it really is), “unlimited access” (means a dialer) and “install a special program” (means spyware). Avoid any pages that offer you goods of dubious nature, require information they don’t seemingly use or you think they don’t need.
Think before you click
The last of the rules, but in many ways the most important: think before you click. At least half of surfing problems are caused by people who haven’t taken their time to think about what exactly was written above the “OK” button. Remember that you can’t always rely on other people’s honesty while surfing – even if only one of a hundred websites is a fake, it means that you visit some dangerous page at lest once a week. Even the best firewall can’t protect you against yourself, so use your common sense every time you feel something is wrong or just too good to be true.
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