Password Protection

You would think in this day and age that security would be a topic on every bodies minds when it comes to protecting their valuable data and credentials online. Most of tend to protect ourselves against the well publicized threats of Virus and spy ware and install software to ensure we are safe. Hands up those of you who have a password that uses a name of a pet or a loved one... come on you know who you are fess up!

Well OK I am assuming by the silence its a large number. Some sites will now not accept passwords unless they are of a certain strength.. this means it has to meat certain standards and you would do well to look at this as a guideline even if these are not enforced by the site.

The guidelines can vary a little but will normally be something like:
- at least 8 characters in length
- contain at least 1 number
- contain upper and lower case letters
- contain 1 special character, such as: ! & * % $ @ # +
- be changed at least once a year
- be different for each site you use

this may seem a bit of a hassle but if you want to be protected then you must follow these guidelines. Of course the downside of this is it is more difficult to remember the growing list of passwords.

A Question of Phishing

When you first run IE7 you may be faced with the question of enabling the Phishing filter. This is just a short explanation of what you are doing when you say yes.

The Phishing Filter helps protect you by verifying every site you visit against a database of phishing websites. While this is great for helping you feel more secure online, but the downside is that it is terrible for performance. Every page request has to wait for a response from the phishing database before it appears in your browser so of course this carries a penalty on loading times and if your connection speed is not too fast this can be a critical point. By disabling this setting you can drastically increase the speed of IE7, but be aware that you of course compromise your security. Most savvy users will know a rogue site when they see one so do not need this filter but for the Novices out there it can prevent problem sites loading to your PC. If you want to disable it at a later point you can do so from your Toolbar using TOOLS - PHISHING FILTER - TURN ON/OFF AUTOMATIC PHISHING FILTER.

What Browser Should I Use ?

Like most things computing there is not really a very simple answer to this as there is quite a choice out there and depending on your browsing habits one might be more suitable than another.

Some time ago Microsoft released Internet Explorer 7. There has been a fairly major update to its predecessor and it has some fairly nice features including a revised interface, tabbed browsing, improved printing features, and a phishing filter. Not to be left on the shelf the other browser companies have been very busy too and have produced revisions to their own products with similar or better features. Quite a few people migrated away from IE6 in the search of a better experience and found it in browsers like Opera and FireFox.

Unfortunately instead of just offering Internet Explorer 7 as an optional download, they are pushing it to customers via the Automatic Windows Update. Which means you may wake up one day soon, after leaving your computer on, and have a brand new browser replacing Internet Explorer 6.0. For many this may not be a problem but for those of us who like to make our own decisions this is very annoying.

For my own choice I use IE7 and FireFox 2.03 but these days mostly FireFox. My partner uses Opera for most browsing but occasionally has to resort to IE7 as there are occasionally rendering problems with some IE optimised sites.

Other options you might want to look at are Maxthon and Avant although the latter has a slightly annoying habit of releasing an update every second or third day which I find a worry.

There are many more out there and at some point I have tried most of them but to be honest they rarely last more than a few days as inevitably I come up against problems with crashes, sites not loading etc.

At the moment in order of preference I would use FireFox then IE7 followed by Opera all solid platforms that will give you a good surfing experience.

Internet Speed Test

A concern to many people is that they pay for an 4 or 8 meg connection but what is the actual speed that they get. Sadly the results can vary so rapidly from one site to another so it can be difficult to judge. sites such as http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/ can offer you a speed test but depending on the server that you connect to even these results can vary quite dramatically. It is however worth trying them as it will at least give you some idea. If having run the tests all results give you a 1 meg or less connection and you are paying for an 8 meg... then you may have some concerns to think about. There are other sites that you could try just do a search in Google for "Internet connection speed test" to find them out. If you want to see if your download speeds are high look to Microsoft.com for a download.... anything at all just to see how it moves. These servers tend to be very quick so you have a better chance than from a normal download server.

When is a Virus Not a Virus

When its a hoax!

Having said this a hoax can become a simply by individuals, in the belief they are doing there duty, forwarding the hoax across the Internet to other unsuspecting individuals, these individuals read the warning and forward it on to still more people. Thus the "virus" spreads throughout the Internet. The next time you receive an email warning of potential hazard to your computer it would be best to report this to your IT manager, if you have one, or perhaps do a search in Google as often these hoaxes have fairly high publicity and it may appear there. Type in a sentence from your mail and see what comes up.

but whatever you do please check out verify its authenticity before forwarding it on to someone. As much damage can be caused by good intention as by those who actually do send viruses on.