INTERNET SAFETY By Nathan Cameron CYBERBULLYING v Cyberbullying

INTERNET SAFETY By Nathan Cameron

CYBERBULLYING v Cyberbullying is a common problem on the internet, it is a big issue on popular social media websites, chat rooms and discussing forums. Cyberbullying is when a person harasses or bullies another person online.

INAPPROPRIATE BEHAVIOUR v Inappropriate behaviour can be best described as people you meet and speak to online act in an inappropriate manner towards you or in general, this would include but not limited to: repeated and unwanted content, abusing others or bullying others online and breaking copyright laws.

GROOMING v Grooming is another serious issue on the internet which is causing great concern. This type of threat is aimed primarily at young people. To describe grooming in basic terms, grooming is when an older person uses the internet and popular sites like social media sites to communicate specifically with young people. In most cases, the person will provide false information about themselves in order to make them popular with a young person they have targetted.

SEXTORTION v Sextortion is short for sexual extortion. This is when sexual predators threaten or blackmail people into doing sexual favours for them or in less cases, money or other favours in exchange for not releasing information considered sensitive to the person they have targeted.

PHISHING v Phishing is an Internet misspelling of Fishing. You may have come across the phrase “fishing for information”. This is essentially what phishing is, but applied to the Internet rather than talking to someone face-to-face. It is related to the term Phreaking, used to describe the activities of phone phreaks, who attempt to manipulate the telephone system to obtain free phone calls.

WIFI v Wi. Fi is a technology that allows electronic devices to connect to a wireless local area network (WLAN), to communicate without cords or cables. This type of wireless networking protocol broadcasts, mainly using radio waves, which means that, without protection, anyone within range and with the right software could see everything.

IDENTITY THEFT v Identity Theft is a serious Internet threat which is becoming more common. The fraudsters use many techniques, such as phishing and spoofing which is sending e-mails from false addresses to obtain information about potential victims.

TROJANS v A Trojan is a malicious program that hides inside another program. A computer Trojan disguises itself as something else in order to gain access to your computer.

VIRUS v A virus is a piece of code which is capable of copying itself and typically has a detrimental effect, such as corrupting the system or destroying data.

WORMS v A worm is a self-replicating computer program, which sends copies of itself to other computers on the same network without any user intervention, taking advantage of security shortcomings on the target.

HACKER v A hacker is a person who breaks into systems, deletes and steals data and carries out many other illegal and destructive acts against networks and computers.

MALWARE v Malware is short for malicious software, a general term used to cover a wide range of programs that are purposely designed to attack, degrade or prevent the intended use of a computer.

SPYWARE v Spyware is a type of malware that secretly gathers information about a user that can be passed back to a ‘spy’ through a user’s Internet connection. Spyware programs are usually hidden among other programs or can be unwittingly downloaded to a user’s system when certain websites are visited.

ADWARE v Adware is any software that causes unwanted adverts to appear when a user is using their system. Sometimes these adverts appear as pop-up boxes that cause other pop-up boxes to appear even when the user tries to close them down. It may take the user many clicks of the mouse to get rid of the adverts, even to the extent of closing their browser or shutting down or restarting their system.

KEY LOGGERS v Key Loggers are programs designed to capture and record every key you press, including your passwords and confidential information, such as bank account and credit card details.

DOS ATTACKS v A Denial of Service attack or Distributed Denial of Service (DDo. S) attack is based upon flooding key servers with useless traffic. The server has to spend so much time dealing with this traffic that users are denied normal service.

HOAXES v A hoax, or specifically an internet hoax is generally a deliberate attempt to deceive users into believing that some threat to Internet safety is true. It is a similar idea to April Fool jokes being played on people. In some cases, there have been hoax virus warnings telling users to delete certain important files on their system that have been affected by a non-existent virus. Deleting these files will cause later problems with the system. Some hoaxes are very simple while others are extremely sophisticated.

SPAM v Spam is the term used to define all of the unwanted e-mail that takes up space in a user’s e-mail inbox. This type of junk e-mail is sent to millions of users and is usually designed to sell things to as many people as possible.

RANSOMWARE v Ransomware is a type of malware that holds a computer system hostage. There are different types of ransomware, but all of them will prevent you from using your PC normally, and will ask you to do something before you can use your PC.