Security On The Internet

You can think of surfing on the internet as putting your PC into direct physical contact with the internet environment. This direct contact means that there is always a risk that someone else may gain access to your computer and to whatever is stored on it. Security on the internet therefore means ensuring the confidentiality of information that you send out and of information that is sent to you.

There are two main ways that someone could gain unauthorized access to your computer:

• The easiest way for this to happen is to conceal malware (malicious software such as a virus, trojan, worm, etc) in a file if you download this file and run it or open it as an e-mail attachment, the malware will become operational on your machine, usually without your being aware of it. Malware is frequently delivered as applications (files with the .EXE extension) but may also be lurking in the macros of word processor and similar office programs (.DOC, .XLS, and .PPT extensions). However it is delivered, malware can cause your system harm or make it unstable and what’s worse it can result in confidential information on your computer or even anywhere on a network that your machine is connected to getting into someone else’s hands.

  To protect yourself against these risks:
  Never download anything from any site you don’t absolutely trust.
  Never run a program if you aren’t sure of where it came from.
  Never open e-mail attachments from people or organizations you don’t know and only open e-mail attachments from people or organizations that you can trust 100% to be safe.

• The other way that information on your computer can be accessed by unauthorized persons is through what’s known as "active web content". ActiveX and Java are two technologies that are used to achieve interactivity on websites. This means you enter information and the website does things according to that information. When you enter your PIN and password on the Garanti Online Branch for example, the website "recognizes" you and sends to your online branch account. Unfortunately malicious individuals can use the same technologies to do bad things like steal your confidential information.

  You can prevent active content from causing harm to your PC or network through the security settings of your browser.

Security Zones

You can protect yourself against malicious active content by means of the security settings on your browser. In this way the browser will refuse to do what the active content is RONing to make it do or else it will warn you that such an attempt is being made and ask for your approval to allow it. You can define different security levels for websites in your browser by placing them in a particular security zone. When a site is in the trusted zone for example, its active content is allowed automatically, files can be downloaded, and you can surf without interruption.

When you first start surfing on the internet every site is accessible and has the same security level (medium security). As you gain experience on the internet, you will learn which sites to put in the trusted zone (low security) and which ones in the restricted (high security).

Many websites nowadays collect information about you when you visit them and they save this information in a small text file (called a "cookie") on your computer. That way, the next time you visit the site it will "recognize" you and in many cases you won’t need to re-enter information that you entered the previous time.

Cookies can’t spread malware and can’t be used to spread malware. However they are a record of what sites you have visited and you may not want that information on your computer because it is accessible to anybody. You can control cookies and even specify what sites can or cannot store cookies on your machine from Tools > Internet Options > Privacy.

Useful Links

To protect yourself against security threats and attacks when on the internet there are a number of auxiliary programs such as internet security, personal firewall, antivirus, etc that should be installed on your system. Some of the websites where you can download these programs are given on Useful Links section.