This article was originally printed in my ‘Ask a Geek’ column in our local Mount Vernon Register-News. Please feel free to email me at askageek [at] register-news [dot] com if you have suggestions, criticism, thanks, hate mail, or whatever. Thanks for your time.
Well, no, not exactly. The Web is a great tool and resource that a lot of people find incredibly useful. There are ways to access information once only available within libraries (www.wikipedia.com). There are resources to investigate and log your genealogy (www.geni.com). Heck, you can even find video lectures from colleges that cost thousands of dollars to attend (www.tinyurl.com/lkgsq).
Unfortunately, there are also a lot of bad guys who know that millions of people use the Internet to access the Web, and not everyone is as careful as they should be when accessing this wealth of knowledge. These same persons spend quite a bit of time and energy doing very little but trying to gain control of your computer and/or trying to get your personal information.
Why would people spend so much time and energy trying to break in to your computer? The simplest answer is money. Even if you don’t do shopping or banking on the Web, will they bother with you? Absolutely. These hooligans might not get anything directly from your computer, but if they control it then they can use it together with others to attack a bank server or to send out spam (junk email) to people who will give up money in some way.
