We've all heard about the dangers of the internet.
You've got your viruses; you've got your spyware; you've got your phishing emails.
The rise of these things and their ability to spread so rapidly and cause so much damage in terms of lost files, lost bandwidth, productivity, and even money should your credit card or bank account be compromised is scary. In fact, it's changed the way that we compute.
Even right out of the box on a new computer, you'll typically find a 30 or 90 day free subscription to a service that will protect you against these nasty things. On any given day, the value of this software is directly proportional to the last time the definitions file was updated. Let your software get too outdated and you won't catch the latest bad thing to come along. After the trial period, you're expected to purchase a subscription to the service for continued protection. You're well advised to do so.
Or, you could turn to some of the free resources that are available to help you out.
Even Microsoft has been helpful in this respect. To protect your computer from the outside attacking your machine, Windows XP and up come with a simple firewall that blocks incoming attacks to your computer. Commercial firewalls extend the concept further and also block outgoing communications from your computer unless you expressly permit your computer to do so.
That's also a fun support concept when your firewall turns off your ability to communicate to the internet. No more web browsing or email until you let the firewall know that it's an acceptable activity and this is the program that you'll be using to do it.
This month, Microsoft has announced the release of Internet Explorer 7. The program has had a huge facelift that now has a more modern look to it and has incorporated some of the best innovations to come along in web browsing.
Notably, you'll find tabbed browsing, you can search directly from the tool bar and even add your own search engines to the list. It's pretty impressive.
It appears that the attempt was made with this release to make it more security conscious than ever.
One of the things that Internet Explorer 7 does is recognize active content on a webpage and requires that you give it permission to run the active content.
While this seems like a prudent decision to make and will make sure that the end user allows only trusted websites to run active content on the computer, it's going to further change the way that we use the internet.
For years, people have worked to enhance their websites to make them attractive and interactive with things like Flash animations, programs, menus, and so on. You'll still be able to use them but you'll need to let your browser know that it's OK to do so.
I guess it's just a sign of the times and should serve as a reminder to all of us that we need to practice the best in safe computing today to make sure that our computer is ready to go back at it tomorrow.
