hackers and cyber criminals

Cyber Criminals Or Friends
By Brenda Kay Winters

Criminals are using the internet more and more. The statistics tell us that one in four will become a victim of internet criminals. This article speaks of one type of internet criminal in particular. It is the one who wants to steal your identity.

Business and banking records have account numbers and social security numbers. These must be guarded. When you receive your bank statement in the mail, check it carefully. Change the PIN number often. This is the personal identification number your debit card requires. If you find an error, close out that account or change the pin number.

Hackers are persons who can obtain your passwords and private information from another computer. These computers are sometimes stolen or the old ones thrown in the trash. The hard drive is a disk that tells what ever information has been on that computer. Go to a reputable computer dealer to get your cleared or destroyed. Some criminals sell your personal information. Shared and wireless computers are most vulnerable to criminal attack. Home computers are safer.

Do not give out passwords to anyone. If some one asks you to call them, go to a public telephone and verify the number.They own scanners that copy your credit card information. Some will use it to take out a small amount of money to see how much you have in your account, then wipe it out later. These criminals are in chat rooms and social networking sites. Do not give out your drivers license number or social security number to them ever. Even the social security administration will not let you post your number on their site.

E-mail is electronic mail that comes to your computer mail. Get another e-mail account name for using the internet. Google, MSN and Yahoo offer e-mail accounts and your internet service provider gives you your main one. You may have to close out your account with your ISP if this e-mail is stolen. False web addresses and e-mails are all over the internet. They may tell you they are your place of employment and direct you to another site.

Do not open any e-mail if you are not sure who it is from. It may contain a virus that will ruin your computer, called crashing it, or slow it down. Hackers are criminals that can watch what you are doing on line. They follow your activity and hack into personal information. Firewalls protect you from hackers. Software purchased can block spam and viruses. Web addresses may be typed wrongly to look like a real site but they are not. Google, yahoo and MSN hotmail have excellent spam blocking filters. Use them.

They are not 100 per cent accurate though. So report spam which is an unwanted e-mail or one that asks for money to spam@uce.gov. Turn off your computer when not in use. It helps stop hackers and saves electricity. If you have become a victim of internet crime or suspect it, report it to http://www.ic3.gov

Brenda Kay Winters Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Brenda_Kay_ Winters

INTERNET

The Internet is a worldwide network of thousands of computers and computer networks. It is a public, voluntary, and cooperative effort between the connected institutions and is not owned or operated by any single organization. The Internet and Transmission Control Protocols were initially developed in 1973 by American computer scientist Vinton Cerf as part of a project sponsored by the United States Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) and directed by American engineer Robert Kahn.

The Internet began as a computer network of ARPA (ARPAnet) that linked computer networks at several universities and research laboratories in the United States. The World Wide Web was developed in 1989 by English computer scientist Timothy Berners-Lee for the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). "The design of the Internet was done in 1973 and published in 1974. There ensued about 10 years of hard work, resulting in the roll out of Internet in 1983. Prior to that, a number of demonstrations were made of the technology - such as the first three-network interconnection demonstrated in November 1977 linking SATNET, PRNET and ARPANET in a path leading from Menlo Park, CA to University College London and back to USC/ISI in Marina del Rey, CA." . - Vinton Cerf explains the timing: Internet, interconnection of computer networks that enables connected machines to communicate directly. The term popularly refers to a particular global interconnection of government, education, and business computer networks that is available to the public. There are also smaller internets, usually for the private use of a single organization, called intranets. Internet technology is a primitive precursor of the Information Superhighway, a theoretical goal of computer communications to provide schools, libraries, businesses, and homes universal access to quality information that will educate, inform, and entertain. In early 1996, the Internet interconnected more than 25 million computers in over 180 countries and continues to grow at a dramatic rate. How Internets Work Internets are formed by connecting local networks through special computers in each network known as gateways. Gateway interconnections are made through various communication paths, including telephone lines, optical fibers, and radio links. Additional networks can be added by linking to new gateways. Information to be delivered to a remote machine is tagged with the computerized address of that particular machine. Different types of addressing formats are used by the various services provided by internets (see Internet address). One format is known as dotted decimal, for example: 123.45.67.89. Another format describes the name of the destination computer and other routing information, such as "machine.dept.univ.edu." The suffix at the end of the internet address designates the type of organization that owns the particular computer network, for example, educational institutions (.edu), military locations (.mil), government offices (.gov), and non-profit organizations (.org). Networks outside the United States use suffixes that indicate the country, for example (.ca) for Canada. Once addressed, the information leaves its home network through a gateway. It is routed from gateway to gateway until it reaches the local network containing the destination machine. Internets have no central control, that is, no single computer directs the flow of information. This differentiates internets from other types of online computer services, such as CompuServe, America Online, and the Microsoft Network. The Internet Protocol The Internet Protocol is the basic software used to control an internet. This protocol specifies how gateway machines route information from the sending computer to the recipient computer. Another protocol, Transmission Control Protocol, checks whether the information has arrived at the destination computer and, if not, causes the information to be resent. Even though computer interaction is in its infancy, it has dramatically changed our world, bridging the barriers of time and distance, allowing people to share information and work together. Evolution toward the Information Superhighway will continue at an accelerating rate. Available content will grow rapidly, making it easier to find any information on the Internet. New applications will provide secure business transactions and new opportunities for commerce. New technologies will increase the speed of information transfer, allowing direct transfer of entertainment-on-demand. Broadcast television may be replaced by unicast, in which each home receives a signal especially tailored for what its residents want to see when they want to see it.

21 Facts About The Internet You Should Know

21 Facts About The Internet You Should Know

You probably use it every day but how well do you
know your Internet?

Ever wonder how all this foolishness got started in the
first place and why? How big it really is? How many present
users there are? The average time spent on a website?
Here are 21 facts you might or might not want to know
about the Internet.


1. Who coined the phrase 'World Wide Web'? 

Tim Berners-Lee in 1990.  He's also considered by most
people as the person who started the whole thing rolling.


2. How did the Internet Start and Why?

It all started with the time-sharing of IBM computers in the
early 1960s at universities such as Dartmouth and Berkeley in
the States. People would share the same computer for their
computing tasks. The Internet also received help from Sputnik!
After this Russian Satellite was launched in 1957, President
Eisenhower formed ARPA to advance computer networking and
communication.

Plus, we won't even mention that whole industry where
people show their naughty bits.


3. Who was J.C.R. Licklider? 

Licklider is often referred to as the father of the Internet because
his ideas of interactive computing and a "Galactic Network" were
the seeds for the Internet. His ideas would be developed thru
DARPA,(Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) in 1962.
Later he would help form ARPANET and the Internet was on it's way.

Vinton Gray Cerf was another founding father of the Internet. He
played a key role in the creation of the Net by developing
the TCP/IP protocols we use for the Internet.



4. What was ARPANET?

ARPANET stands for 'Advanced Research Projects Agency Network'
Came about in the arena of Sputnik and the cold war. The military
needed a method of communicating and sharing all the information on
computers for research and development. It would also be a handy
communication system if all traditional ways were wiped out in
a nuclear attack!


5. What was the First long distance Connection?

In 1965 using a low speed dial-up telephone line, MIT
researcher Lawrence G. Roberts working with Thomas Merrill,
connected the TX-2 computer in Massachusetts to the Q-32
in California. The phone lines weren't quite up to the task!


6. Who was Leonard Kleinrock?

Kleinrock came up with the theory of packet switching,
the basic form of Internet connections. With a group
of UCLA graduate students on Oct. 29, 1969, Kleinrock
connected with the Stanford Research Institute but as
they typed in the G in LOGIN -- the system crashed!


7.What is an Ethernet?

It's a protocol or system for a set of computer networking
technologies for local area networks (LANs), the origins of
which came from Bob Metcalfe's Harvard's dissertation on
"Packet Networks."


8. When was the first mouse introduced?

The first computer mouse was introduced in 1968 by
Douglas Engelbart at the Fall Joint Computer Expo
in San Francisco.


9. Did Al Gore really invent the Internet?

No, but give credit where credit is due. He did the most of
any elected official to actively promote the Internet. However,
he wasn't even in Congress when ARPANET was formed in 1969
or even when the term 'Internet' came into use in 1974. Gore was
first elected in 1976.

Gore himself may be the cause of this Urban Legend or
Internet myth - during a Wolf Blitzer CNN interview on
March 9, 1999 - Al Gore did say: "During my service in the
United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating
the Internet."

Causing himself some ridicule but also paving the way for
such future one-liners as: "I invented the environment!"


10. Who coined the phrase 'information superhighway'?

Wikipedia says Nam June Paik coined the phrase "information
superhighway" in 1974.

Al Gore popularized the phrase in the early 1990's.


11. Which decade really saw the explosion of the net?

The 1990s. The Internet exploded into the mainstream with
the release of the first popular web browser Mosaic in 1993.


12. How fast is the Internet growing?

Very fast! It took 38 years for radio to reach 50 million users,
13 years for TV, and only 5 years for the Internet. Source:
CyberAtlas.com


13. Number of Internet Users and Breakdown.

The Internet is roughly 35% English, 65% Non-English with
the Chinese at 14%. Yet only 13% of world's population,
812 million are Internet users as of Dec. '04. North America
has the highest continental concentration with 70% of the
people using the Internet.


14. Country with the highest percentage of net users?

Sweden at 75%.


15. How big is the Internet's surfing world?

Google's index now stands at over 8 billion pages. There are
now over a Billion Internet Users and that number is growing
rapidily.


16. What was the Net's first index called?

Archie, other than library catalogs, this was the first
index created in 1989 by Peter Deutsch at McGill in Montreal.
Although it spouted such others as Veronica and Jughead, Archie
was short for Archiver and had nothing to do with the
comic strip.

Backrub was the original name for Google!  Larry Page and Sergey
Brin used this term for their search engine in 1996, Google as we
know it debuted in 1998. The name Google is a twist on the word
Googol, a number represented as 1 followed by 100 zeros.


17. Who coined the phrase 'The Web might be better than sex'?

Bob Metcalfe in 1995.


18. What does HTTP stand for?

HyperText Transfer Protocol - it's the protocol for moving files
across the net; it requires two client programs. The HTTP client
and the server.


19. What is an ISP?

Internet Service Provider - This is the service or company you use to
access the Internet.


20. What is HTML?

Hypertext Markup Language - it's the coded format language for
transmitting and creating hypertext web pages.


21. What are your average surfing habits according to Nielsen
NetRatings?

Each month you usually visit 59 domains, view 1,050 pages allocating 45
seconds for each page and spend about 25 hours doing all this net activity!
Each surfing session lasts 51 minutes.


One last thought - Henry Edward Hardy in his Master's Thesis (1993) on
The History of the Net stated "The Net is Immortal". Ever wonder what
this baby will be like in a 100 years? a 1000 years? Just something
to think about as you keep your eye on that cursor.