If you are like anyone else, all you want is a secured computer to be able to use. There are too many ways that someone can use the computer against you these days, so you do all that you can to try to protect yourself. It may seem like it is hard road to trek, but if you keep a steady vigilance over your computer, you will start to enjoy the benefits of doing it. If you own a computer, then it is part of your responsibility to keep yourself safe on it. It is the same as if you own a car. It is your responsibility to know how to drive the car safely. The same thing holds up when it comes to computers. You must listen to the messages that you see on how you can protect yourself while you are online. If you do listen to the messages, then as we said earlier, you will start to enjoy the benefits of having a safe computer.

One of the main benefits of listening to all of the safety messages about using your computer on the internet is that you will not have to worry about catching any malware while you surf the web. When people do not listen to what is told to them, they tend to get caught up in the traps that are laid down by black hat hackers. This includes common warnings such as do not click on links that are sent by strangers and to scan all email attachments that you receive. Of course even the best of us forget to follow these rules 100% of the time. We are only human. But some of us will know the rules, but blatantly click on the links anyway. And then when their computer starts to mess up a couple of days later, they claim that they did nothing wrong and that it is the systems fault. They never put together that their actions may have caused the system to mess up.

If you are a person who listens to the experts that tell you to set up your firewall before you start to surf the internet, then you have just made your computer safety jump up to about 85%. There are people who ignore messages such as this and surf the internet with their firewalls turned off. They do this for a variety of reasons but the biggest culprit is that one of their programs that they like to use does not work while the firewall is on. Instead of learning how to open a port on their firewall settings, they turn the whole thing off and leave themselves vulnerable. This is not good strategy for anyone to use. Just read the manual that came with the software or go to their web site if it didn’t come with a manual. Learn how to set your firewall up properly so that you can use your favorite programs and remain safe at the same time. 
 
If you keep your computer secured, then you will be able to surf the internet almost worry free.

If you have a job that makes you deal with a lot of data that runs through your computer, you must make sure that you have a secured working environment. If you do not, then there is a chance that it can hurt your or your employee’s business. If you have made the move to Windows 7, then you can be sure that you have one of the most secured working environments of any operating system. But there are ways that you can make it more secured. No operating system will be able to handle the litany of threats that exist on the internet right out of the box. It will need something extra to be able to do this. Here are a couple of ways that you can make sure that you have a clean working environment.

The first thing that you need to do to guarantee that you have a clean working environment, is to set up a regiment that will make sure that your computer is bug free. When you download certain programs, they may have a bug that your anti virus can not yet detect. So, when you originally downloaded the program, it was able to slip through all of the sensors that would have normally went off when a piece of malware enters your computer. To correct this mistake, you need to update your anti virus software and run another scan on your computer. Some people think that running two anti virus solutions on the machine will help with a problem such as this. That is not true. When you run two anti virus on the same computer, they will set each other off and possibly erase certain features from one of the programs. So just stick with one anti virus program, and run a full system scan at least once a week.

The second thing that you can do, in making sure that your Windows 7 system is a secured environment, is to make sure that you check the logs of your firewall or router, and see if there has been any unusual activity. If you are working on a project that has very sensitive information involved with it, there may be people that try to get that information from you. They will try to test certain weak points in your network security and find a way to get around this. This is why you might have to take the unusual step of checking the logs for traffic that is requesting permission to access your machine. If you do not understand the data, then get someone from your IT department that will. Someone who has the basic knowledge of corporate network security will be able to read a server or router log, and tell you if someone is trying to penetrate your system. Remember, if the data is valuable enough, someone will try to go after it.

You will normally hear that you can protect your computer by just installing anti virus and letting it work. Sometimes, to have a truly secured computing experience, you have to go a little deeper than that. You have to fine tune the security until it is protecting you from even the most advanced threats.

One of the most private things that you will do on the internet is to send emails to someone. When we sign up for an email service, we expect them to give us a security standard that is higher than anything else we do on the internet besides banking. Our email accounts are filled with both personal and business secrets that we would like to keep to ourselves. So if anyone was able to get into our emails, it could possibly be a devastating experience for both us and whoever we were sending the email to. But breaking into your account is not the only way that someone would be able to read your private emails. They could also see them as you send them through the network. Lucky for us there are ways that we can stop this from happening. There are several ways that you can encrypt your email messages to keep them quiet as they go through the air. We will discuss these methods and how you can use them when you send your own emails, especially over a wireless network. 
 
Most people who have used the internet, have kind of an ideal of what encryption means. You get an example of it every time that you go to a web site and see that little lock in your browser. When you see that lock, you know that there is a good chance that no one will be able to see your message as you see it. The lock helps you feel safe when you are making a transaction on your bank account.  The act of encryption allows your data to move back and forth, in what seems to the naked eye, as a bunch of scrambled data. It is then translated by software that has the encryption key into readable text. Now the person on the other end can understand what was sent to them. This type of security is exactly what you need when you send an email message out. 
 
There are several programs out there that will encrypt your email messages for you. One of the pieces of software that will do it is called GnuPG. It is free, open sourced software and it is very powerful. It gives you a public and private key that is used to be able to encrypt and decrypt a message. The person who has the private key is able to decrypt the message so that they can read it. If you do not have the private key, even if you are the one who originally sent the email, then you cannot see the message that was sent. There is also a setting that will encrypt messages using Microsoft Outlook. If you are in a hurry, this is a more than reasonable tool to use. 
 
Your email is a private thing; make sure that you keep it that way by using encryption on your messages. 

Searching the web through Google, you will come across an amazing assortment of treasures that you would have never thought that you would be interested in. Because of the link hierarchy of the internet, you can search Google for one thing and find yourself amazed at a whole different section of the internet. That is a great thing about the internet, the ability to find something of interest that you did not even think you would care about. But this same link hierarchy can also lead you down some dark paths on the internet as well. These are paths where you have to be careful when they ask you to click on links or download items. You want to be careful where you perform these types of activity at. If you pick the wrong web site to download an item from, you can be in trouble when it is time to install it. You can go from a nice working computer, to a machine that you will have to spend the next few days getting malware off of. In this article we will how you what to do if you find yourself on a certain type of site. If you find yourself on one of the types of web sites that we list, you want to make sure that you do not trust it and that you do not download anything from it. 
 
The first type of site that you want to be aware of if you find yourself accidently on it, is a warez site. A warez site is a web site that has cracked or pirated software, movies, music and anything else that you can think of. These web sites are notorious for people trying to find a way to stick something on your computer, which you do not want. So if you find that you are on a web site like this, make sure that you are not tempted to download anything from it. These web sites cannot be trusted and will lead you to nothing but trouble. 
 
Another type of web site that you want to make sure you do not download anything from when you are there, is any site that is asking for your personal information. If you find yourself on a web site that you didn’t mean to be on and it is asking for more than your email, then make sure that you do not download anything from there. More than likely it is a phising site that has somehow tricked you into going there. These sites will try to use multiple methods to get personal information from you. If they are not able to get it from the web site, then they will try to trick you into downloading something onto your computer. If you install it, then they will be able to put on there any piece of malware that they desire. This can lead to a huge loss of privacy for you and your family. 
 
The last type of site that you do not want to download anything from is adult sites. We hate to generalize the whole industry that runs adult sites but there are too many out there that are sketchy in nature. Hundreds of people a month report that there is some sort of malware that is present on an adult site that they visit regularly. If it is not put there by the owner of the site, then it is put there by one of the members of the site. Either way it can be dangerous for your computer. 
 
These are the three types of sites that you want to avoid downloading anything from if possible. If you do, then you can find yourself in a world of hurt.

Over the years, people have come up with many inventive ways to keep all of the passwords that they use, together in one place. Some people will write it in Microsoft’s notepad and just save it in My Documents. Others will use an actual physical notepad and keep it by the computer as they surf the web. They only pull it out when they get to a certain web site that needs it. Some even still, might use Microsoft Word and try to save the password list in a document format. They do this so that they can try to lock it to keep it safe. All of these methods provides you an ease of use, that will allow you to get the password that you need at anytime. But these methods are useless, when it comes to protecting the password from someone trying to look at it. What you need, is a proper solution that will both store your password and keep them protected at all times. In this article, we will show you how to do this. We will help you keep your password safe from prying eyes.

Safe passwords? Encryption!

You have several options when it comes to keeping your passwords both safe and in one place. But all of these solutions have one thing in common. The use of encryption. Your passwords should use some type of encryption to keep others from being able to see it. Even if they find the file that the passwords are on, they still should not be able to get the information. We will focus on two ways of doing this and you can choose whichever method you think would work best for you.

Encrypted folder

The first solution, is that you can create an encrypted folder that would protect anything that goes inside of it. This includes any type of file and not just your password. The process is easy and once you have done it, you will wonder why you waited this long. All you have to do is create a folder like you would normally do on your hard drive. After you create the folder, place the files that you want to protect inside of it. Once that is done, get ready to encrypt that folder. You can use a program such as Truecrypt to get this part of the job done. It will walk you through a wizard, that will give you many options. Pick the options that work best for you and then close the program. After that, you now have your passwords in an encrypted folder. No one will be able to get to them. You can also repeat this same process with a USB thumb drive. This would allow you to take the password with you in a secured format. If you lost it, it would still keep the data inside of it safe.

Special password storing tools

The other way that you can keep all of your passwords secured, is to use a program such as Keepass. This program stores your password, username and other information inside of a encrypted database. You will need a master password to get inside of this database. Once in there, you can create new entries and they will automatically be protected. You can also send the database files wherever you want and no one will be able to get in them. Unless you gave them the master password, no one would be able to access the database files. This is a great solution when you want to keep everything a little more organized than just a folder.

As you see, we have shown you several ways of how you can keep your passwords both organized and secured. If you want to keep your data safe, this is the best way.

You just got home from work. So now you just want to sit down and relax, while you spend some time on your computer. You decide that you want to see what all of your friends are up to on Facebook. So you log in and you see the normal chatter that goes on every other time that you log in. You look up and see a piece of red on the screen. This indicates that someone has sent you a message. You then click on the message and you see a weird link. You know the person that sent it to you and you consider them trustworthy. They state in the message that they really want you to see what is on the other side of that link. So you click it and nothing happens. You are just directed to a blank page, with nothing displayed on it. You start to surf Facebook again and then you decide to log out. The next day you receive an email from a couple of friends asking why you sent them a weird link that took them to nowhere. Now you know that the link was not as innocent as it seemed. It infected your Facebook account, and sent your friends that same infection. There are a couple of viruses out there, that attack social media web sites specifically. We will go through a few of them and tell you what you should look out for.

Social media security – common attacks

One of the most effective attacks on a social network was the Koobface virus. It had its reign of terror a couple of years ago. This was a virus, or more accurately a worm, named Koobface that attacked the users of Facebook. Since nothing like it had been seen before, people were caught unprepared. It was so effective, that the same formula was used to attack other social media web sites as well. This included Myspace, Bebo, Friendster and others. The worm would direct users to download a fake Adobe Flash player upgrade message. Once they did this, their computer would become infected and the worm would gain control over certain part of the system. There were a lot of people that were hit with this malware and the person who wrote it probably made a lot of money.

There have been a couple of other attacks that have affected social media web sites as well. These attacks included using fake videos and pictures to get people to click on them. Once the item was clicked, then the attacker had free reign to install whatever they needed to, on the person’s computer. There are still attacks that happen, but people are becoming more attuned in to being careful in what items they click on. Even on a web site such as Facebook.

Social media security – rules

You can avoid your computer being in danger when it comes to a site such as this, if you follow a certain set of rules. The first rule, is to treat social media web sites like you treat your email. Scan everything, no matter where it comes from. Also do not friend anyone that you do not know. Or if you do, check out their profile page and see if they are a real person. Most of the malware that you get will come from fake accounts. They just want to be able to have access to you and send you links.

If you follow the social media security rules, then you will have a safe time on your computer. You will be able to enjoy social media web sites as they were meant to be used.

When you are alone on your computer at night, surfing the internet, you will sometimes have a tendency to believe that being on the computer will make you totally isolated. As if no one in the world, would be able to violate the inner sanctity of your computer. But unfortunately, this is not true. When we use our computers on the internet, there are many ways that people are able to access all of our inner thoughts that we put down in digital format. Even though we may believe that our data will always be secured, it can only be that way if we work at it. When most people think about their security being violated on the computer, they mostly think about black hat hackers coming through the line remotely from another part of the world. But this not always the case. A large percentages of security breakdowns in a wireless network, happen when the perpetrator is only a few yards away from the actual network. So how can we stop this from happening. How can we keep people from accessing the network with our explicit permission. In this article, we will give you a few ways that will allow you to keep your network secured.

In Windows 7, the network security features have been made to be more effective. If you go into your control panel, you will see a wide overview on the different states of your home network. You can check the network that you are connected to and you can also create homegroups. Homegroups are a specific settings that will allow you to decide such matters as who gets to share certain data items on your computer. If the visiting computer on the network is not part of the homegroup, it is not allowed to access that part of your computer. This a good first step, but will only keep parts of your network safe. To really be sure that you are secured, we must take a look at the router.

There are a few steps that you must take with the router, so that you are sure that no one can access your network without you knowing. The first thing that you have to do, is to make sure that you change the username and password that gives you access to the router. Make sure that they are not on the default setting that they were in when you bought the router from the store. After you have done that, make sure that you have an encryption layer set up for the router. You can use WEP, WPA. or WPA II. We recommend WPA II, since it is the upgraded version of the most secured network encryption out there. Now after you set the encryption layer up, if anyone want to get on your network, they have know the password that you set up. But that might not be secured enough for your taste. You can also go in the router and set it so that someone has to have a particular MAC address to get on the network. MAC addresses are the unique number that is on your network card. Every device that connects to the internet has one. They can be spoofed, but someone would have to know your network card to be able to get the right number that will allow them on your network.

So as you can see, there are several levels of home network security that you can set up. Make sure that you do, so that you can truly surf the web secured.

People like to feel secure in anything that they do. If you drive a car, you want to make sure that it is not going to have any problems while it is on the road. You do not want to stop at a red light and the brakes do not work. The same thing applies when you are riding on an elevator. When you press the button to go to a certain floor, you expect it to stop at that floor and to not keep going. People would like that same feeling when they surf the internet. They want to be sure that when they connect their computer to the network, there will be no one trying to get into their system. They have heard all of the horror stories and have watched a ton of movies that describe the antics of black hat hackers. The average user knows that an attack on their computer can cause them financial problems. These financial problems can last for a long time. So how can you keep intruders off of Windows 7 as you surf the internet? One of the best ways is to download and install a firewall on your computer.

So you might be wondering what a firewall does exactly and how can it keep people off of your computer. Well, there are a couple of ways that we can answer that. A firewall is a program that monitors the incoming and outgoing traffic from the internet. It does this by looking at the ports on your computer. The ports are what allows your computer to have a bridge to the outside world. We could go into a more technical reading of how the ports work, but all you need to know, is that it allows the internet to come to your computer. So a firewall will close off the ports that you are not using. For a program to use a closed port, you have to give it explicit permission to do that. Once you have gave it permission, then that particular program will be able to communicate with the outside world as well. Your browser, and IM clients, are all examples of programs that use a port to connect to the internet. Using a firewall will stop any bad programs from using a port and keep allowing the good programs to continue working.

There are several ways that you can have a firewall monitor your computer as you are working. The first way is to activate the firewall that comes with your wireless router. Most modern day routers will come with a firewall already built into the firmware. You can go into the routers admin menu and set this up. If you do not surf the internet with a router and use a modem only, you can download a software firewall to protect your computer. There are several of them out there. You can read on Google which one’s are highly regarded and make your decision from there. Also be aware that Microsoft Windows 7 comes with a firewall pre-installed. You can activate it and have all of the protection that you will ever need.

As you see, a firewall is a good ideal while you are surfing the internet. Make sure you have one in place so that you can be sure that you are secured.