Product Description

Protect Yourself! Easy, Step-by-Step Help from the World's Most Trusted Security Provider The Internet is crawling with risks; if you bank or shop online, or even just surf the Web and send e-mail, you are exposed to hackers, thieves, and con artists. Today's bad guys don't need to pick your locks or break your windows: they can attack you and your family over the Internet. Are you prepared? Enjoy a safer online experience with easy, step-by-step help from Symantec, the world's most trusted security provider. This easy-to-understand book helps protect you against Internet threats. Written specifically for nontechnical computer users, you'll learn simple ways to keep you and your family safe and secure while online. *Keep your PC free of spyware, adware, worms, viruses, and intruders. *Protect your identity and privacy. *Browse the Web safely and eliminate junk mail from your inbox. *Keep eavesdroppers out of your wireless network. *Make the most of the new security features built into Windows XP. *Shield your children from pornography and online predators. *Protect your new Internet-based phone service. *Download free tools that help you keep your computer safe.A (c) Copyright Pearson Education. All rights reserved.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1328684 in Books
• Published on: 2005-09-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

From the Inside Flap
IntroductionIntroduction

Thank you for picking up this book. If you’re looking for quick and easy solutions to keeping your Windows-based computers safe from the dark side of the Internet, this is it. This book is especially for nontechnical users, so it includes a host of step-by-step instructions and helpful figures. If you know how to surf the Web and download software, you have all the skills you need to gain the benefits of a safe and secure Internet experience.

Today more and more of us conduct sensitive transactions via e-mail and the Internet, including online banking, stock trading, e-commerce purchasing, and personal accounts management. While the Internet makes such activities more convenient, it also exposes us to security risks. Traditional risks such as viruses, worms, and Trojan horses still plague the Internet. In addition, a new set of threats has emerged, including spyware, Internet fraud, and spam. These headline-grabbing threats, which are driven by profit-motivated criminals, are becoming increasingly sophisticated, have shorter life cycles, and use new attack vectors. Such threats pose daunting new challenges for everyone who uses the Internet.

Even seemingly safe information and entertainment sites can carry risks. For example, in a study conducted by Internet security company Symantec, researchers took a brand-new Windows PC, plugged it into the Internet without any security software, and browsed the Web. Testers spent one hour each interacting with differ-ent categories of Web sites, including e-commerce, gaming, and news sites. Surprisingly, children’s Web sites dumped the most unwanted software onto the test PC—359 pieces of adware in just an hour’s surfing!

The primary goal of this book is to help you understand that using the Internet carries a certain amount of risk—to your privacy, to the integrity of your personal data, and to your computer’s usability and performance. We clearly explain those risks and show you, in simple but comprehensive detail, how to reduce your exposure.

Unlike other computer security books that focus on one or two problems such as viruses or spam, this book is intended to be a comprehensive resource for the broad range of risks that Internet users face. You’ll find a wealth of information about how to keep your Windows computer free of spyware, worms, viruses, spam, and intruders; use e-mail and Web browsers safely; help protect your iden-tity and privacy; protect a wireless connection from eavesdroppers and scammers; and shield your kids from pornography and online predators.

If you flip through the chapters or look at the table of contents, you’ll see that this book includes loads of details—including figures and step-by-step instructions—about how to choose and use a wide variety of security software, how to take advantage of the security features built into Windows XP Service Pack 2, and how to protect yourself and your family from the criminals and con artists trolling for victims. Many of the software tools and programs recommended in this book are free.

This book is designed to help you solve specific problems so that you don’t have to read it from start to finish. You can start with any chapter about any one of the risks you’re most concerned about and get all the information you need. Of course, many Internet risks are intertwined, so this book provides references to other relevant chapters.

The Internet is often compared to a superhighway, but it’s more like a city—one where we are spending more and more of our lives. It’s also a city of almost infinite size and serious dangers. This book is designed to be a trusted guide to this city so that you and your family can enjoy a safe and secure Internet experience.

© Copyright Pearson Education. All rights reserved.

From the Back Cover

Protect Yourself! Easy, Step-by-Step Help from the World’s Most Trusted Security Provider

The Internet is crawling with risks; if you bank or shop online, or even just surf the Web and send e-mail, you are exposed to hackers, thieves, and con artists. Today’s bad guys don’t need to pick your locks or break your windows: they can attack you and your family over the Internet. Are you prepared? Enjoy a safer online experience with easy, step-by-step help from Symantec, the world’s most trusted security provider.

This easy-to-understand book helps protect you against Internet threats. Written specifically for nontechnical computer users, you’ll learn simple ways to keep you and your family safe and secure while online.

• Keep your PC free of spyware, adware, worms, viruses, and intruders.
• Protect your identity and privacy.
• Browse the Web safely and eliminate junk mail from your inbox.
• Keep eavesdroppers out of your wireless network.
• Make the most of the new security features built into Windows XP.
• Shield your children from pornography and online predators.
• Protect your new Internet-based phone service.
• Download free tools that help you keep your computer safe.

© Copyright Pearson Education. All rights reserved.

About the Author

Andrew Conry-Murray is the technology editor at IT Architect, an award-winning publication for information technology professionals. He has been writing about computer and network security since 2000.

Vincent Weafer has an extensive range of experience, gained from more than 20 years in the information technology industry, ranging from software development, systems engineering, to security research positions. For the past eight years, he has been the operational leader of the Symantec Global Security Response team, where his mission is to advance the research into new computer security threats and provide security content solutions such as anti-virus, antispam, intrusion and vulnerability response, real-time alerting, content solutions, research, and analysis.

Weafer has also been one of Symantec’s main spokespeople on Internet security threats and trends, with national and international press and broadcast media, appearing on CBS, ABC, NBC, CNN, and BBC, among many others. In addition, he has presented at many international conferences on security threats and trends, presenting papers and contributing to technical panels run by the European Institute for Computer AntiVirus Research (EICAR), Virus Bulletin, Association of AntiVirus Asia Researchers (AVAR), and Australian Computer Emergency Response Team (AUSCERT), among many others.

© Copyright Pearson Education. All rights reserved.