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Internet Safety


Skemcin

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I recently began working with isafe.org to help in authoring guidelines for family oriented websites. The goal is to inform parents and other family members how to make sure that their web site, or any web site that they may appear on, is built in a way to maintain a certain or complete level of anonymity to the public eye.In essence, these guidelines protect you and your family. If you, anyone you know, or if you know your name or picture is on any kind of website, these guidelines offer helpful suggests on how to make sure you do not fall victim to any sort of internet crime.Webmaster Guidelines(41kb)(rough draft)More information can be gathered by visiting isafe.org or you can download a collection of other guidelines here. These include cyber bullying, email threats, identity theft, intellectual property, internet fraud, malicious code, online personal safety, predator tip, and social networking:Internet Safety Tip Sheets(445kb)(collection)

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I think all of the things in the Webmaster Guidelines is useless. I mean the sentences:

A public family/individual blog on the Internet is no different from standing on your front porch and yelling your personal day-to-day happenings to the neighbors (only multiplied by a 100 million or so).
and
Your family is not world news.
say it all.Instead of giving this paper, one could easily sum all that up with:Don't create a family/individual site, unless you have something to say other then your day-to-day happenings. This not only protects your personal information, but ensures you'll be interesing to whoever reads your blog. :) By the way, the sentence:
Looking into the ISP provider, although often restricted in hard drive storage space, database functionality, and server-side scripting languages is more difficult to resolve than a stand-alone domain.
doesn't make any sence to me. There is either a word or some comma missing here. You should paraprase this. Possibly separate it in two sentences for clarity.I like most of the things in the collection. Didn't find as much stangenessness as with the first sheet. I think all of them should end with theese three tips:
Become a part of your child’s online experience.It can be a fun journey to explore the wonders of the Internet as a family. As computer-savvy as kids and teens are today, they may even teach you a thing or two!• Learn about the Internet.The more you know about how the Internet works, the better prepared you are to teach your children about how online predators operate and what you can do together to identify and elude them.• Get involved with i-SAFE Inc.Raise Internet safety awareness by joining, creating, or supporting an i-PARENT Board in your school or communityorganization, and informing other parents how to keep their families safe online.
Not only the "Intelectual Property" and "Predator Tip" sheets I mean. Those three are essential to the overall computer education, so they are simply a must for everything this site has to offer.Speaking of intelectual property, I must say most people (including myself) KNOW that they are using illegal software and KNOW they are violating intelectual property rights. The only legal programs I have are some free ones and my Guild Wars game. Everything else, Dreamwaver, Office, even the OS is illegal. And I'm not afraid to say that out loud, for one very simple reason: My goverment permits using pirated software. What they don't allow is distibuting pirated software. So when I "borrow" a CD from someone, he's the one to blame. When I download a copy of Windows on my ISP's server, my ISP is the one to be blame (if ever caught) and so on. Goverment buildings are also dissallowed of using pirated software, but I'm a home user, thank you.Also, I know I'm 17, so that may sound childish coming from me, but why not tell your first (or maybe... just maybe even full) name, age and city? Those are just basic stuff, and aren't something that may be used to steal your identity. At least in my country... there's a thing called UIN (Unique Identification Number) assigned to you only, so unless the thief knows that number too, you're safe. I mean, legitimate companyes that need your UIN and name won't share it with third parties and they won't collect your adress and age, scince they can gather it with by checking up the UIN with the police. They'll check it up anyway, to ensure the UIN belongs to that person. On the other side, places that ask you for name and age won't ask you for UIN and adress, scince they shouldn't need it for whatever they're doing. That other thing is probably not going to be money related either, scince such info is easily obtainable. Other combinations are also possible, but if they are 2 on 2, it's all good. Banks are probably one of the very few organizations that ask for all of those, but they do it only for the purpose of estabilishing a legitimate account. And that's how it should be! Otherwise, identity theft would have been a breeze. And pedophiles... without the adress, they can't do anything. Knowing the city, name and age of someone is not enough to locate him/her unless it's a really small city or a village and knowing the UIN is only usefull if you are or have close contacts with a policeman. Name, age and city is all the "sacred" information I reveal about myself and fortunatly for me, Plovdiv is a big town and I'm sure there are a lot more 17 year old "Vasil"s in it.
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boen_robot, thanks for your feed back. Since I mentioned the first document is a rough draft, I'd expect to find things that need to be ironed out so I appreciate you pointing out a couple of them. I'll be sure to incorporate them accordingly.As for the rest of the content in the rough draft adn in the collection, I do not think that overly generalizing the information does any good. You have to keep in mind that most kids know more about computers than there parents. So the parents need things spelled out for them. With all due respect, I do not think you realize the gravity of the issue - it is naive to say "knowing the city, name and age of someone is not enough to locate him/her". I do not think you realize just how much information is publically available to people.In any respect, I feel your position on this matter is typical of most teenagers (its just the internet - they're no where near me, they can;t touch me) and that is why there are adults, like myself, who understand the deeper complexities of the situation who choose to do something about it. Giving people three general guidelines is simply not enough - you seem to be basing that off of what you already know versus putting yourself in the shoes of someone who knows nothing about computers, let alone the internet.

Edited by Skemcin
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Nice stuff... Very important too...I had my email (yahoo account) hacked by someone in late June of this year. I don't practice to open spams- infact, most go straight to my junk mail. I don't even open forwards from my friends. I really don't know what happened there- but I know when it happened I was actually checking my mail, got a re-login problem, tried to sign back in and... u know the rest. i know it was hacked because i've seen the person signed into yahoo mesenger with my own eyes. the only thing i can think about is that they are into internet porn and wanted the address. well- the address does not go along with my personality really, but then i was young. (it was hotttlove@yahoo.com) had that account for about 10 yrs- was infact my main mailing address. up to last week someone asked my why i dont answer her when i'm online...and YES- it still hurts... thats probably why i am going on and on about it!all kinda things bothers me with that. among them is that my name and info is still on the profile- so any bad thing being done with that accout- it all comes back to me! :) i think i'll cut here now, cause..... :)

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I know when it happened I was actually checking my mail, got a re-login problem, tried to sign back in and... u know the rest
Almost sounds like a keylogger, someone installed something on your machine that showed them the text you type, including your password. When you logged in, they were watching and got your password. They might have also been listening on your network and monitoring traffic or something like that, but I assume the login for hotmail is https.
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Almost sounds like a keylogger, someone installed something on your machine that showed them the text you type, including your password. When you logged in, they were watching and got your password. They might have also been listening on your network and monitoring traffic or something like that, but I assume the login for hotmail is https.
hmmmm.... i doubt that. only 2 of us really use this pc. i'm suspicious tho of a mail i might have opened. only 2 mails i opened that night. i never even saw the content of the last one i opened which is from a very trusted friend- who dont know much about computers in that way.hmmm... i really don't know what happened... i don't know.... i don't.... i.....EMAILS ARE FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!AND THERE ARE LITERALLY MILLIONS OF POSSIBLE EMAIL ADDRESS NAMES U CAN COME UP WITH!!!!!!!!WHY HACK SOMEONE'S OWN????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!my my my--> I really thought i was over this! it's almost as though someone died for me!
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Yeah, it sucks. But a keylogger doesn't need to be installed by someone using the computer, you can get spyware or a virus that has a keylogger. And, for the record, the vast majority of software like that gets installed through holes in Internet Explorer, so if you are using IE you are leaving yourself open to things like that. I have a computer at home that I use for work, and I've had it running for about 2 years with no antivirus, no spyware protection or firewall with no problems. The only thing I use IE for is to test what I am working on. Last night I had to spend a few hours cleaning spyware off the machine because my roommate was surfing around the net using IE. That's all it takes.BTW: it's possible to block access to IE on XP, I didn't know that. It's under the "Program Access and Defaults" tool, which is part of Add/Remove Programs.

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BTW: it's possible to block access to IE on XP, I didn't know that. It's under the "Program Access and Defaults" tool, which is part of Add/Remove Programs.
True, but that doesn't remove IE you know. It only removes the shortcuts. If a messanger (like ICQ for example) was installed on that machine, it will keep opening links in IE, instead of the default browser (if set to another one) which will still grant access to IE for the user.
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Man, ive been hacked so many times.. I just get used to it lol. I actually got hacked mainly on the game called runescape. If you have heard of it or palyed it you know the people there. They are all kids that are ages 9-25 mainly, then when they see someone that is alot better than them they go pretty much crazy and go to extremes like keyloggers (the main hacking program they use). I got hacked several times but I didnt care since nothing was really lost from my life. But I guess other things could be issues!

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Man, ive been hacked so many times.. I just get used to it lol. I actually got hacked mainly on the game called runescape. If you have heard of it or palyed it you know the people there. They are all kids that are ages 9-25 mainly, then when they see someone that is alot better than them they go pretty much crazy and go to extremes like keyloggers (the main hacking program they use). I got hacked several times but I didnt care since nothing was really lost from my life. But I guess other things could be issues!
http://dewasoft.com/privacy/kldetector.htm :) Ruud Hermans
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well- i have not been using IE for literally years now. we use to have macintosh's at home, which is pretty much safe. the most i've used IE was actually at college- in the school's computer labs, and that was still limited cause i had an apple ibook. now that i have a home-based windows pc- i've been using firefox- for over 2 years now.yes, i know u can hide IE to eliminate access to it. but boen is right- it will still force itself open with certain programs. like right now i have it disabled, but when i am coding and wanna test my sites, macromedia forces it open for me- and thats actually the 'only' times i use it (which is only recently too).well, i guess getting hacked in a gameroom is not a big deal. but that account was my 'main', maaiin, maaaaiiinn mail.anyway- Ruud Hermans, thanx for the link u posted. i downloaded it at once and checked. and................... shocks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!.............. the result i got is loooooooong- yup! really! i dont even know where to start.ps. the internet was suppose to be a blessing to mankind, but it's proving to be more of a curse! why do we enjoy making evil of good? hhhmmmmmmmm......

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i went through all the results. did not find anything suspiscious... actually, i was not quite sure, so i sent it to a pro to back check- nothing suspiscious. so i'm back to square one.thx

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