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Pop Up Windows: The web is full of pop up windows. They can be helpful, they can be a nuisance and sometimes they can be dangerous. NEVER CLICK ON A POP UP WITHOUT FIRST STUDYING WHAT IT IS TELLING YOU. MANY POP UPS WILL DOWNLOAD SEARCH BARS PLUS SPYWARE, TRACKING COOKIES AND MORE WITHOUT YOU REALIZING IT. IF YOU CLICK IN HASTE, YOU MAY BE SORRY TOMORROW. READ THE WORDS ON THE POP UP and LEARN TO CLICK THE PROPER TAB OR BUTTON TO REFUSE ITS DOWNLOAD. I use a very simplistic program to stop pop up ads. It does not stop all of them but it catches most and it's developer does update it. Called Pop Up Stopper, it's a little jewel and it's free. There are many free and very basic software programs that can help you to take care of your computer. I have a page with helpful and informative links listed on it and there are no cookies tracking or pop up ads to bother you. Put them into your favorites to refer to at any time. Click here or here or here all mirrored sites to view links I find very useful. I do not use search bars from anywhere INCLUDING Hotbar, Yahoo or Gator or Google or any site, as they tend to slow down your computer and add tracking cookies to keep tabs on what you do. This leads to unwanted emails and more. The address bar (located at the top of your screen where you see the names of the internet pages you travel to) can be set up as a search bar. There are many who poo poo Microsoft products as lousy. I can tell you if you learn to use your programs and your tools correctly and do your updates and do not allow children to play with your computer and act with some semblance of good sense the Microsoft and Windows programs will take you anywhere on the net safely and there is nothing you can't do with it. Mac computers are safer as there are fewer in use and the hackers don't target them as they do the Microsoft products. There are more secure settings in your Internet Explorer browser if you want to use them. The more secure, the less fun so I use an intermediate setting. There is nothing I know of that I can't see or do on the internet. I can not tell you that you will always be 100% safe on the net. When I first began browsing I stumbled into a pornography site which had scripts written into the pages that would not allow me to leave the site. If you get caught up in a site like that, don't panic, pull the plug on the computer if you need to. If things of that nature happen to me, I immediately run a virus scan at TrendMicro and then run Spybot and Ad Aware for nuisance downloads. Spyware: I use Ad Aware and Spybot regularly to remove the spyware that sites download to you. There is No Honor at internet sites. I have a friend in the priesthood who has filthy icons all over his desktop thru spyware downloads. We have worked with him but need to go back to his home again to work on it more. His computer is almost incapacitated because of spyware as he is not computer literate enough. Download and use Ad Aware and Spybot. Both programs are small, free and worth every bit of learning time you spend to use them. Find the links to all of these programs on this senior page, CLICK HERE. Virus Scanning: You can scan with virus scanners (McAfee, Norton, Trend Micro's PC-cillin and more) installed into your computer "keeping it updated and set up to use properly" and you can visit sites on the internet like Trend Micro House Call and do a free virus scan online of newly downloaded files and in fact, all files in your computer. We use Trend Micro faithfully and never open anything without checking it first. We visit the site and go to the free virus scan then direct the scan to the file folder. I save emails, I receive with attachments I want to look at, into a file folder and then go to Trend Micro House Call and have it scanned. I don't care if the file was sent to you by your sister, if she has a virus in her computer and doesn't know she has the virus and it is sent out in an email or on a disk to you in your snail mail and you open it, you may have some aggravating and costly problems on your hands. Microsoft Security Updates: We keep a setting in our computer fixed to let us know when Microsoft has updates to do. Go to your Start\Settings\Control Panel\System\Automatic Updates tab. Make your selections from choices of how and when. When there is an update, you can either choose to let it run auto from the site or do as we do and go to the site to get the download. If you have not kept up with your updates and you have a number of them to do, do the oldest first and only do one or two at a time. We have had updates to hang up and if it fails, you have to find the file on the site and re-download and re-install. It may take longer to do especially on a modem but we still find it best to do it that way. We never miss an update and we do it as soon as we are notified.
All pages have been designed, thought out and compiled as helps for use by Seniors and persons new to computing by: RSBlain aka LittleEgypt of http://www.flyingpigwebdesign.com *Scripts used are from: Dynamic Drive
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