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Do not give out your full name, address, or phone number to anyone online

Don’t use lazy passwords. Choosing password or 1234 is like putting a luggage lock on the front door of your house. Also, people will be able to guess it and hack. Instead, come up with a longer password that contains both letters and numbers/characters, preferably one that references something significant only to you. For example, if the name of your beloved childhood goldfish was Sir Bubbles, swap out some of the letters for numbers and you can end up with a very nice password like s1rbubb735 that only you understand.

privacy is among our inalienable rights

being smart is NOT enough to protect yourself from dangerous Internet scams, frustrating spam, or devious identity theft

Passwords are the first line of defense against cyber criminals. It’s important to pick strong passwords that are different for each of your important accounts and to change them regularly. Here are some ideas to help create strong passwords. Use a unique password for all your important accounts. Use unique passwords for your accounts, especially important accounts like email and online banking. You are likely to have dozens of accounts across the web, and you cannot guarantee the security of all of them. Criminals target sites that lack strong security, in order to harvest usernames and passwords that they test against other popular sites. When you use the same password across the web, a cyber criminal can learn the password from a less secure site and then use that password to compromise your important accounts. Use a long password The longer your password is, the harder it is to guess. There are almost one quintillion possible 10-character passwords (that’s 4,000 times as many possibilities as if your password only has eight characters) … and that’s if you only use numbers and letters. Use a password with a mix of letters, numbers, and symbols Using numbers, symbols and mixed-case letters in your password increases the difficulty of guessing or cracking your password. For example, there are more than 6 quadrillion possible variations for an eight-character password with numbers, symbols, and mixed-case letters – 30,000 times more variations than an eight-character password with only lowercase letters. Try using a line from a song, film or play Some passwords are easy to guess or crack: Simple words or phrases like “password” or “letmein,” keyboard patterns such as “qwerty” or “qazwsx,” patterns such as “abcd1234” or personal information like your birthday or street name.So choose a combination of letters, numbers, or symbols to create a unique password that’s unrelated to your personal information.One idea you can try is to choose a line from your favorite song, film or play, like “To be or not to be: That is the question.” Then use numbers, symbols and mixed-case letters to recreate it: “2bon2bT1tq” is a password with quadrillions of variations. The more unusual the phrase you choose the better!Or you could pick a random word or phrase, and insert letters and numbers into the beginning, middle, and end, such as “sPo0kyh@ll0w3En.” Make sure your password recovery options are up-to-date and secure Make sure your recovery email address is up to date so that you can receive emails in case you need to reset your password. Sometimes you can also add a phone number to receive password reset codes via text message. Additionally, many websites (including Google Accounts) will ask you to choose a question to verify your identity if you ever forget your password. If you’re able to create your own question, try to come up with a question that has an answer only you would know. Try to find a way to make your answer unique – you can do this by using some of the tips above – so that even if someone guesses the answer, they won’t know how to enter it properly. Keep your password reminders in a secret place that isn’t easily visible Don’t leave notes with your passwords in plain site, on your computer or desk. If you do decide to save your passwords in a file on your computer, create a unique name for the file so people don’t know what’s inside. Avoid giving the file an obvious name, such as “my passwords.” If you have a difficult time remembering multiple passwords, a trusted password manager may be a good solution. Spend a few minutes checking out the reviews and reputations of these services.

Internet addiction sounds like a punch line. But it ruined my brother's life. Print Email Comments (Page 1 of 3) Last Friday I walked into the most recent inpatient Internet addiction treatment center to open in the United States and asked a really dumb question. "Do you have Wi-Fi here?" I bumbled, prompting an awkward smile from the man who opened the door at the Fall City, Wash.-based ReSTART Internet Addiction Recovery Program. It was the equivalent of walking into an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting and asking for a single-malt Scotch.It was also revealing. I hadn't checked my e-mail, Facebook, or Twitter accounts for nearly 14 hours by the time I showed up at the wooded five-acre retreat, situated with some irony less than 15 miles from Microsoft Corp.'s Redmond headquarters. That drought had begun to eat away at me enough that by the time I walked through the door I was so fixated on plugging back in that my brain was able to push past the blatant insensitivity it took to ask such a question.Most of my friends smirked when I told them I was heading up to Washington to write a story about the newly opened center, which sits on a wooded parcel of property adorned with a 3,500-square-foot craftsman house, Western red cedar treehouses, chicken coops, and goat pens. We all kid about being hooked on Facebook, but it doesn't really seem like the kind of thing anybody would need to drop $14,000 (the cost of a 45-day stay at ReSTART) on to quit cold turkey. The fact is, though, I have believed for some time now that Internet addiction is a very real phenomenon. And not just because I've read stories about the well-established and at-capacity treatment centers in China and South Korea, or because I know antisocial kids who routinely put in 14-hour shifts playing World of Warcraft. Internet addiction is the reason my 36-year-old brother has been homeless for most of his adult life.I hadn't really understood this until recently, because having a homeless brother always terrified me too much to make any real effort to understand why Andrew could never get his life together. A couple of years ago I decided I'd protected myself from this depressing truth long enough. I contacted my brother and said I wanted to spend a day with him, from the moment he awoke to the time he went to sleep, to see what his life was like. I approached the trip with a journalist's curiosity and method—a pen and steno pad—but it was obviously going to be a personal expedition.Andrew, who is four years older than I am, sleeps in a roomy tent, atop three mattresses he's acquired from one place or another, between a set of railroad tracks and Oregon State Highway 99, in a clearing ringed by blackberry bushes. He lives most days the same way. He gets up when he feels like it, walks to the local Grocery Outlet, and uses food stamps to buy a microwaveable meal. Then he treks over to the local soup kitchen and enjoys a free lunch, answering the greetings of his other homeless pals, who speak to me highly of the obese, bearded man they call "Ace."When the rest of his buddies head off to the park to suck down malt liquor or puff weed, Andrew eyes a different fix at the Oregon State University computer lab, which is open to the public. He'll spend the next 10 hours or so there, eyes focused on a computer screen, pausing only to heat up that microwaved meal. He plays role-playing videogames such as World of Warcraft, but he's also got a page of RSS feeds that makes my head spin, filled with blogs he's interested in, news Web sites, and other tentacles into cyberspace. He goes "home" only when the lab closes. He's recently acquired a laptop, after much fundraising from sympathetic relatives, so he can now stay connected day and night, if he can find an open Wi-Fi hot spot.Through the day I peppered him with questions, all meant to answer this one: why had he failed to make something of himself, and I hadn't? It was a complicated question, but it

Internet. safety or online safety is the security of people and their info when using the Internet.

Personal firewalls and security software packages (

Be Careful What You Download

Don't Respond to Emails Requesting Personal Information

Internet Safety Ask Questions The best form of Online Safety begins at home with you, the parent. We offer you the following tips to keep your child safe on the Internet. The best way to know what your child is doing online is to ask. Whether you ask other parents, an Internet-savvy friend, or your child about how they use the Internet asking the right questions will help you understand what your child is doing online so you can make sure they are making safe online choices. Questions to ask your child: What sites do you visit? What do you do on those sites? Why do you go to that site? How much time do you spend on the site? Did you have to register? What information did they ask for? What information did you give? Spend time surfing the Web with your child. This is a great way to learn about what types of interactions your child is having online, and with whom.

one has the opportunity to communicate and collaborate with anyone from anywhere and anytime. Unfortunately, many users have not been taught how to make appropriate decisions when faced with so many different digital communicatio

communicate with other people. In the 19th century, forms of communication were limited. In the 21st

Digital Citizenship