Every technology attracts its share of evildoers. Ships brought us piracy 2000 years ago. The motor car brought us crooked car salesmen 100 years ago. The e-world has brought us e-vandals (commonly known as “virus writers”) and e-fraudsters (“phishers”).

(Used with permission from Arun at http://www.flickr.com/photos/arunjrk/2393439923/ , attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 Generic)

What About Our Children?

When I was a child, I was taught about the dangers of the road. We need to teach today’s children about the dangers of the e-world. (“Look right, left and right again before you cross!”) Here are some tips:

• Think carefully before you post any details about where you live and how old you are
• If you read something that bothers or worries you, ask you parents
• Don’t respond to e-mails from people you don’t know
• Don’t type in anything to do with money – this includes credit card details

This is just a short list of things that I could think of in a hurry.

Parents often ask me about parent controls and “site blockers”. My advice is “don’t try it”. Children love a challenge, and it can take as little as 10 minutes for them to find a way around it. Educating them about the dangers of inappropriate web sites (pornographers, fraudsters) is generally much more effective.

And for Yourself?

There are mountains of advice out there on the Internet. This post would be unreadable if I was to include it all. Here are just some quick tips:

• Keep your security software up-to-date
  • If your security software recommends that you install an update, do it!
• Keep automatic updates on
• Talk to your bank, credit union and credit card issuers about security (or read their advice on their web sites)
• If you use e-banking, get a security tag. If your bank won’t give or sell you one, change your bank for one that does.
• If you think that your computer has been attacked, get help from a local technical expert
• If you get a notice about “Your computer has malware on it” when you visit a web page, be suspicious of it – use your own security software to check instead
• Before you buy anything from a web site, check that it has at least the following:
  • A postal address – and check that it is real using a telephone directory
  • A telephone number – ring them up
  • Some sort of legal business identifier (a sales tax number that you can check with your local government offices)

For more information you can look at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7732971.stm .

If you have any questions, I invite you to post them below.

This post was inspired by Sue Waters .