Safe Surfing Tips Internet Safety Tips for Teens By: LaQuacious Garrett

Surfing The Web?

No! Surfing the NET! During this lesson you will learn important internet safety tips and rules of being online.

Smart Surfing First rule of smart surfing? Remain as anonymous as possible. That means keeping all private information private. Here are some examples of private information that you should never give out on the Internet: full name home address phone number Social Security number passwords names of family members credit card numbers

Chat Rooms When in chatrooms remember that not everyone may be who they say they are. For example a person who says "she" is a 14-year-old girl from New York may really be a 42-year-old man from California. If someone harasses you online, says anything inappropriate, or does anything that makes you feel uncomfortable, contact your Parents, teacher or adult. Know that there are rules many Internet Service Providers (ISP) have about online behavior. If you disobey an ISP's rules, your ISP may penalize you by disabling your account, and sometimes every account in a household, either temporarily or permanently.

Posting Pictures & Vidoes Think about what you post. Sharing photos or intimate details online, even in private s, can cause you problems later on. Even people you consider friends can use this info against you, especially if they become ex-friends.

Strangers Avoid in-person meetings. The only way someone can physically harm you is if you’re both in the same location. So – to be 100% safe – don’t meet them in person. If you really have to get together with someone you “met” online, don’t go alone. Have the meeting in a public place, tell a parent or some other solid backup, and bring some friends along.

The Four R’s R ECOGNIZER ECOGNIZE techniques used by online predators to deceive. R EFUSER EFUSE requests for personal information. R ESPONDR ESPOND assertively if you are ever in an uncomfortable situation online. Exit the program, log off or turn off the computer, tell a trusted adult, or call the police. R EPORTR EPORT to a trusted adult any suspicious or dangerous contact that makes you feel uncomfortable.

Downloading Know the rules about Intellectual Property. Do not illegally download music and movies. Another point to consider is that downloading files from other people’s computers puts you at risk for inadvertently downloading computer viruses, Trojan horses, or spyware/adware to your machine. A computer virus or a Trojan horse can cause your computer to malfunction, even to become permanently disabled. Spyware allows people outside your home to track what you are doing online. Adware will cause your computer to fill up with electronic junk mail called spam.

More Downloading Before downloading any files to your computer, I have six tips you should know so you can be more secure.

File Size First of all, look at the file size of the files that you want to download. For example, you want to download freeware software from a web site and you know that the software file size should be around 12 or 13 MB. But on that web site, it says 234 kB. You need to be very careful with this as it might be a virus or trojan because the size is just not right. Many people have been tricked to download this type of file and the files turn out to be malicious software.

Firewall Use a firewall before downloading any files. If the files you’ve downloaded are trying to send privacy information to the hackers, it will not be able to do so because the firewall will block its outgoing traffic.

File Extension File extensions is very important when downloading files from the Internet. File extension with.exe and have a small file size might be malicious software. It would be better you have an antivirus that will terminate the connection every time you tried to download any malicious software.

Antivirus I strongly advise you to find an antivirus right now. If you don’t have any antivirus or anti-spyware programs on your computer, your computer might be infected.

Add-Ons Use Internet Explorer Add-On that will tell you if the website you’re visiting contains threats that can affect your computer. Use add-on such as McAffe Site Advisor that you can download for free because this add-on will advise you which websites are safe to visit. As I mentioned in the first tip, you need to know the file size before downloading. If you don’t know the file size, google it and visit the website which the site advisor add-on consider as safe.

Wrap Up There is no complete solution to computer security. The only way you can be sure your computer will be safe from any threats is by turning it off and sealed it in a sealed box. But what we can do is arm ourselves with essential security knowledge as it will help us in many ways.

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