Securing tracks on the net

When I was told to write an article I did not know what to write about as all the good topics were taken. I stated to think on what to write about; I crossed over an article about a worm on facebook. This got me thinking, how many of us do know how browse safely on the internet. What I mean is that if we can protect our selves from getting viruses or malware on our computers. So I thought, I could write about how to be safe while surfing on the internet.

The first place we need to be careful is our emails providers. Most computers get infected due to spam emails.  You can follow some steps to protect your selves.

Firstly, do not open emails which you don’t know the sender. If you don’t know who the sender is you should not open the email chances are it’s just a spam mail. You should be sure that the mail is from a creditable source before opening it. Then you should not click on a link in a mail to an unknown website. To just check what the website is about you can do a Google search of the first few characters of the URL, for example if the link says “www.thisisawwebsite.com/12urllsk”, just search for “thisisawwebsite.com” in Google. This way you can get some idea what kind of site is it.

Another way a virus can attack your computer is through your browser. Your computer can get infected by just visiting a malicious website. If a website asks to download a file automatically in order to use the site, generally one should not do it. It is important to keep updating our web browsers usually that helps enhance security.

Having a up-to-date antivirus software also helps reduce the risk of your computer to catch a virus.

With social networks like facebook growing, and most of our personal information getting stores somewhere in the internet, we should be careful and keep our computer secure.

 -- Eshan , ug 2