A recent case of a professor Connecticut expose her class to pop-ups pornographic should be a wake-up call for all of us. The teacher was recently convicted and faces 40 years in prison, although the defense says her computer was infested with spyware that basically hijacked his computer and began to display pornography. Whatever the truth in this case is actually, we all need to realize that spyware and other destructive programs smacked havoc on our computers, and maybe even our jobs, relationships and, in this case, our freedom.
How is this possible? Maybe you open a message innocent looking, perhaps even to a friend, and you download the attachment. Next thing you know, your computer is deleted data or advertising began popping up each time you use your browser.You download free software, videos or torrents and suddenly you find the home page of your browser changed popups promoting porn sites are randomly generated, or your computer is generally low and odd things happen.
Young people are especially vulnerable to this kind of thing, because they tend to be a bit more adventurous of the computer and less hesitant than many adults when it comes to downloading from the Internet. This can be a big problem, especially if students share a computer with the rest of the family.
Does this mean that we should ban children from the use of computers. Hardly. The ability to use a computer is a compulsory in our society. However, there are some precautions we could take.
The first and ultimately most important thing we can do is educate our children about safe computing practices. For example, teach them that opening email attachments is very dangerous, unless we know with certainty that the sender does not send us the message and attachment. Some malicious programs divert his computer and send e-mails with attachments to everyone in your address book. While the email address of your friend gets you came from. Typically, the message will be just as harmless, "Hey how you doing. Here is a file for you to cool to check out ". If you get something like that, send your friend back and verify that they did indeed send you an email. If not, then delete the message without opening the attachment.
Safe practices like this can not only make your computer safe from destructive programs, but make your time online and offline more constructive and pleasant.
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