A Guide for Internet
Internet is a useful but risky world.
Internet is useful．You can check any kinds of information, enjoy on-line shopping, chat with your friends over time or exchange hot debates on the net forums. The ways of enjoyments expands limitlessly. But because internet is so handy, there are many people who want to use it for ill purposes.
Once you step into the internet world, everything that happens falls upon your responsibility. When something happens, you may be able to rely on police, but it is kind of too late in a way. Bad guys out there are trying to entrap you by any kinds of frauds like virus, cracking, spams and fishing whenever you are unguarded. On this page we want to tell you some basic ways to protect you from their fierce traps.
Basic Principle? Handling Private Information
Your name, address and telephone number. It is very dangerous to disclose such information in public spots. Public spots means where everyone can see private information; for example, bulletin boards system(*1) or chats (*2) and so on.
It is very common to use nick names called "handle name" in such spots. Let's think of your nick name made of 2 to 5 letters and use it when you mail to bulletin boards system or introduce yourself in chats.
There are services that require your real name and address. When you want to use such services, watch the following. First, check if the web site has its "privacy policy". The privacy policy is the measure(s) for protection of private information. If the privacy policy is good and reliable, the company looks trustworthy. And when you are going to type in your information, check if the browser (*3) has a key mark. When you don't know what this means, check if "https://" is shown in the address on the web site that you are going to enter your information. If there is "https://" shown, it is sure the exchanges of information on that web site are encoded by SSL (*4).
- *1 Bulletin Board System
- A system in which an unspecified number (specified in some cases) of people send, read and reply their mails among them. It's simply called "bulletin board" or "BBS". A system that makes multiple themes into one is called "forum".
- *2 Chat
- Chat is similar to the bulletin board above but is used to exchange writing messages because your message immediately spreads to other people. "WEB Chat", "IRC" or "Instant Messenger (IM)" represent this system. IM provides an exchange of messages only among specified people but WEB Chat allows other people to easily read your message. A system called "VoiceChat" has recently been used.
- *3 Browser
- Browser is a software that you are using this page now. It is necessary to read web sites. A majority of people use "Internet explorer", but "Firefox" or "Opera" are also typical of this software.
- *4 SSL
- SSL a method of encoding. Sorry to cut a difficult explanation, but it raises a security level so that the third party cannot read exchanges of information on internet.