The Network Connection

This column is a continuing feature of Benchmarks intended to present news and information on various aspects of wide area networks.

Keeping yourself safe from the Internet

Franklin Roosevelt said it best: "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself...." Some people would have you believe, however, that you should fear the Internet that somehow, having an Internet connection exposes you and your computer to unprecedented peril. This phenomenon evidences itself in the recurring Internet E-mail virus scares that crop up, and is now also exploited by some wily software marketers.

Should we fear the Internet? It is very easy to fear what is unknown, and to many people, the Internet is a vast unknown. Many are now using E-mail in the course of their job or education, but don't really know how the Internet works. Likewise, there has been an equally dramatic rise in the number of home computers subscribing to Internet services. Service providers are making it very easy to connect, but is it safe to use such services?

I think that with a bit of education and reason, we'll see that perhaps the Internet is not as dangerous as it is portrayed to be. Security and privacy concerns should not be ignored, however, a little knowledge can go a long way in helping you protect your interests while utilizing the Internet. A couple of examples will help us understand how some Internet threats are non-existent, while others are blown out of proportion.

Finding a cure for the E-mail virus

It invariably happens. Someone gets an alert about a deadly E-mail virus, and since the mail has been sent some computing company or military address, they decide that it must be true, coming from such an authoritative source, and they forward it to their entire department, or to an entire organization. The message usually goes something like this "If you get any mail with blah blah blah' as the subject, delete it immediately if you read the message, it will erase your hard drive."

Time for a reality check. E-mail messages are text. E-mail is transmitted as text. E-mail messages are processed by your E-mail program as text. Text is simple data one byte per character. Text is like an inert object. You can manipulate it, but by itself, it will take no action. Attachments to E-mail messages can be programs, however, while they are being transmitted over the Internet, they are sent as encoded text. Even if someone sends you E-mail with an attached program, until you direct your E-mail program to decode and save an attachment and you run it as a program, an attachment cannot act on its own. It certainly cannot operate through your E-mail program. Reading an E-mail message might do harm to your psyche, but it can't, on its own, harm your hard drive. (For more information about computer virus myths and hoaxes, see http://www.kumite.com/myths/)

That said, you have to remember that once you work with an E-mail attachment outside your E-mail program, you then have to be careful. Microsoft Office documents can contain "Word macro viruses." Programs of undetermined origin might be infected with a computer virus. Both of these hazards can be guarded against by making sure that you have an up-to-date and working virus protection program.

Cookies and Applets

Cookies and applets these are sweet snacks, right? Not harmful to anything but your waistline, right? Well maybe that's true in the kitchen, but where the Internet is concerned a cookie is information stored by your web browser that can be used by a WWW server to identify your computer has having visited their site before. As we saw in the Network Connection published in the September/October 1997 Benchmarks, cookies have a number of legitimate uses, and when you use the controls available within your web browser, you can easily guard your privacy and prevent unwanted cookies from being set.

Applets are small programs written in a language which makes them easily transmitted over the Internet. The most common language for applets is called Java, and was developed by Sun Microsystems. Microsoft has developed a competing language called ActiveX. Because these programs actually run on your computer via facilities included in your Web browser, they can potentially have access to the files on your hard disk. Fortunately, browsers such as Netscape provide you with control over which applets will be allowed to run on your computer. Netscape Communicator version 4 will even provide you with an estimate of the security risk associated with any particular Java applet (see the Security selection of the Communicator menu in Netscape to get more information about or configure Java security).

The best way to guard against security or privacy breaches from Internet cookies or applets is to become familiar with the controls for these features within your Web browser. The online help can be very useful for learning more about them and about your options for using them or preventing these features from being active. There are also a multitude of books, written for a non-technical audience, about Web access and about specific browsers.

Your Best Defense

Information is your best defense against invasions of your privacy or security. While some enterprising software marketers might sell you a program which claims to guard your computer and files, by using such a program you are putting your trust in that company rather than in your own good sense. If you educate yourself about how your browser works, then software to guard you from the Internet is not necessary.

Keeping your computer programs and data secure is a serious concern, especially if you rely on your computer for important business or personal information. Before you run out and by software to protect you from the Internet, however, you'd better be sure that you have two important facilities in place and are using them: have backup software for your hard disk and use it on a regular basis; have virus protection software which is active and up-to-date. With these basic tools and some knowledge of the security features of your Web browser, you can guard your own interests and feel much more secure about your Internet use.

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