by Reviewrz

Created on: March 13, 2007   Last Updated: May 14, 2007

This article will discuss the elements to ensuring that you and your personal details on the Internet. It will cover both the tools you can use, as well as the mind-set that is required when using the Internet.

To begin with, the best defense is commonsense. Many viruses and attacks can be prevented or avoided if you keep in mind that there are a lot of people out there who are trying to take advantage of you, your data, and your computer. There are measures that you should always take, including:

- Don't give out personal information unless it is a trusted source asking for it
- Only pass secure information on websites that have a lock (indicating that the connection is secure)
- Don't share files, especially with untrusted sources, as you are sending out an invitation for a virus

Now, although on-line safety is always something that needs to be considered, something that may come as a relief is that in the vast majority of cases, you don't need to have completely impenetrable security to be safe, providing you are a regular home user. The reasoning for this is that the data that most people have on their home computer is not that juicy for a potential hacker. I'll use the old joke of the two hikers in the forest who hear a bear approaching. They climb up a tree, but the bear jumps up, and its only a matter of time before it gets them. They decide that the only option they have is to make a run for it. Before they jump, one of them starts to put on his running shoes. The other looks at him and says 'Mate, you can't possibly think that you're going to out-run a bear?!', to which the other replies 'I don't need to out-run the bear - I only need to out-run you.'

So, what that means when we translate it into an Internet security point of view is that a potential hacker will not try that hard to get into your computer. So, if your computer is quite well protected, they may not bother with the time, and move onto another victim, whose security is much more lax.

How can we make sure that the hacker doesn't bother with us? The best solution to this is combining vigilance, as discussed above, with a good firewall. A firewall is a piece of software that stands between the outside world and our computer. By default, the firewall blocks all incoming and outgoing communication, and we have to set exceptions in the rule base. So, lets say a certain computer needs to communicate with mine on port 123, I need to open up communication in the rule base, but only to that computer,

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