The Birds and Bees of Online Safety: What mama should have told you…
Remember what your mother told you?…wear your mittens, look both ways before you cross the street, don’t swim until 30 minutes after you eat, cigarettes are bad for you, use a condom…” Well, today’s mothers should also be telling you to “be safe” when you surf the internet.
What does it mean to practice safe web surfing? Here are seven points I adapted from a poster that my colleagues at the NewYork City Metro InfraGard chapter developed to comunicate what you should do to practice “safe web surfing.”
- Use passwords that have at least eight characters, and mix it up a bit–lowercase, uppercase, numbers and special symbols. Here’s an example: rather than “amysmith” as a password, use “@mySm1th”…get it? For more information on strong passwords, click here: Strong Passwords. To generate r-e-a-l-l-y strong passwords, use this tool: Password Generator
- Contrary to what you’ve heard before, write your passwords down and store them (somewhere other than under the keyboard on your desk). There is a greater chance that an easy to remember password will be cracked than there is for someone to break into your house or office and steal that sticky you wrote them down on. Bruce Scheiner talks about this in his blog here: Write Down your Passwords
- Use virus scanning and spyware software–Microsoft has a free one available. Also, make sure your virus scanning software is turned ON and that it’s signature files are up-to-date.
- Only open email attachments from people you know. No matter how enticing they appear to be…Free Cell Phone…Make Your (whatever) Bigger (or Smaller)…Verify Your Bank Account! …DO NOT open the attachment.
- Do NOT click on any web links in emails from people you do not know–if there’s a web address you want to go to, type web address directly into your browser–www.goodsite.commay actually take you to a malicous website.
- Parents can use the administrative capabilities of Microsoft Windows to lockdown sites/domains you don;t want you kids to visit. See instructions for doing this here: Block a Website
- Be very careful downloading and installing toolbars from non-reputable sources. They might offer you all kinds of need smiley faces and cool tools, but they could also be stealing your personal information and doing other nefarious things. Here’s one article that talks about a fake toolbar for a very well known website: Dangerous Toolbar
Let me know if you have other ideas I should add to this list…comments and thoughts welcomed..r/Chuck
Chuck Georgo
chuck@nowheretohide.org