families and offers a rich vein of educational content.

However, there are potential dangers - welcome to the

seedy world of viruses, spam, trojans, pornography, spyware

and other nasties.

Here are the Top Twelve Threats No Computer User Should

Ignore:

1. Viruses - A computer program that copies itself. They

often disrupt your computer system or damage your data.

Viruses are usually received by email attachments so be

careful opening anything from a dubious source. They can

affect anyone, for example, the destructive Mydoom worm

affected one out of three small and mid-sized businesses.

2. Spyware - Sends information about you and your computer

to somebody else. Spyware may send the addresses of sites

you have visited or worse still, transmit personal

information. With today's concerns about identify theft

this is a real worry. For example, CoolWebSearch may hijack

web searches, home page, and other Internet Explorer

settings. Spyware is normally received as part of shareware

or freeware downloaded from the web.

3. IP Spoofing - A technique to gain unauthorized access

to computers, whereby the intruder sends messages to a

computer with an address indicating that the message is

coming from a trusted host.

4. Trojans - An apparently legitimate computer program

that is really intended to disrupt and damage computer

activity by sending information, perhaps even passwords

onto a third party without you knowing. As an example,

recent emails entitled "Osama Bin Laden Captured" attempted

to download the "Trj/Small.B." Trojan if the embedded URL

was clicked. This trojan attempts to hijack the PC.

5. Spam - Unsolicited mail often promoting products of a

dubious financial or sexual nature. Don't leave your email

address on websites and internet bulletin boards as they

are harvested by spammers.

6. Adware - puts advertisements on your screen. These take

many forms including popups, popunders and advertisements

that appear later, even if your browser is closed. Some are

sent using the Windows Messenger service which allows a

spammer to direct an advertisement straight to your

computer by sequentially sending messages to IP addresses.

Always irritating, they are also often of a pornographic

nature.

7. Diallers - for those of us still with dial up modems,

dialler programs redirect calls to a very expensive number.

You won't know until you get the bill.

8. Hijackers - Hijackers take control of your web browser

and may reset your home page, search bar and search pages.

They can redirect you to undesirable sites or stop you

going to particular sites.

9. Hackers - With so much personal data available online

to anyone with a password you must be sure your password is

secure. If you are using your mother's maiden name, your

cat's name or your birthday then your password is at risk.

Here are two tips for making a secure password. Method One -

pick two random unrelated three letter words and two

digits. Mix them up and what do you have? A secure password

such as "red19cat" or "hotpin73". Method Two - pick a short

sequence of words such as Now Is The Winter Of Our

Discontent Made Glorious' and you have a password of

"nitwoodmg". You could even change the I's and O's to

digits.

10. Phishing - Emails purporting to come from reliable

sources such as Paypal, Ebay or your bank. Often wanting

you to verify your account details, they can look very

realistic but are generally scams to harvest usernames and

passwords. Always open a new browser winder and type the

address there, rather than clicking on the link provided.

11. Hoaxes - Chain letters, scams, false alarms. At best

they take up time and bandwidth but at worst vulnerable can

be victims of fraud. Pass it on!

12. Stranger-danger - For those of us with children - do

you know what they actually do when they are online? Are

they working on homework tasks, downloading illegal music

or pornography? Or are they chatting to strangers in chat

rooms? You should consider blocking access to undesirable

sites and logging their activity with a surveillance tool.

Oh, and don't forget that where children are concerned,

computers should always be kept in a family room and never

in their bedroom.

Three Step Action Plan

There are three essential steps that should be taken to

ensure your PC is kept threat-free.

Firstly, be sensible when opening attachments or following

email instructions from apparently reputable sites.

Secondly, make sure you are using the latest service pack

of Windows as Microsoft is continually closing loopholes to

tighten up security.

Finally, there's a range of low cost tools such as

firewalls, antivirus, spam blockers and spyware killers

available. Like everything else they vary in quality and

you tend to get what you pay for so always do your research

first and perhaps try a free trial before getting your

credit card out.

There's a quick reference list to dozens of top sites promoting different aspects of

safe surfing packed with useful information and there's

also a great set of top tips for safe surfing.