No matter where you live or what you do, there different perils that we have to face everyday. For example, there is crime, accidents, sickness, our health, etc... This is just what we call a fact of life, we either deal with it or stop living.
We also have different ways to protect ourselves by taking certain precautions. Like, not putting ourselves in dangerous situations, driving more carefully, taking care of our bodies, etc...
Using the Internet has just as many perils as life itself, and like in life we have to take certain precautions. For example, we have to deal with viruses, worms, Trojans, spyware, spam, etc.. Then there are fairly new types of attacks such as phishing, and botnets.
Phishing is pretty much spam taken to its next logical level. Most phishing attacks rely on a fake email that tries to get you to go to a phony web site to reveal your personal information (such as your user name and password).
Botnets are just malware (i.e.: viruses, worms, Trojans, spyware, etc.) taken to its next logical level. Botnets, basically use your computer and bandwidth to send spam, attack a remote web site, etc.
Imagine your computer, and hundreds or thousands like it, waiting for commands from a central server on what to do next. All of this generally done without you even knowing its happening.
(Tomorrow I will discuss how to protect your computer in Part 2 of this article)
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