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compliments of

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edited by linda mccarthy and denise weldon-siviy page press smart books for smart people®

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the author and publisher have taken care in the preparation of this book but make no expressed or implied warranty of any kind and assume no responsibility for errors or omissions no liability is assumed for incidental or consequential damages in connection with or arising out of the use of the information or programs contained herein all trademarks are the property of their respective owners publisher linda mccarthy editor in chief denise weldon-siviy managing editor linda mccarthy cover designer alan clements cover artist nina matsumoto interior artist heather dixon web design eric tindall and ngenworks indexer joy dean lee interior design and composition kim scott bumpy design content distribution keith watson the publisher offers printed discounts on this book when ordered in quantity for bulk purchases or special sales which may include electronic versions and/or custom covers and content particular to your business training goals marketing focus and branding interests for more information please contact u.s corporate and education sales 510 220-8865 except where otherwise noted content in this publication is licensed under the creative commons attribution-noncommercial-no derivative works 3.0 united states license available at http creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/us/legalcode isbn 978-0-615-37366-9 library of congress cataloging-in-publication data mccarthy linda own your space keep yourself and your stuff safe online linda mccarthy isbn 978-0-615-37366-9 electronic 1 computer security 2 computers and children 3 internet and teenagers 4 computer networks-security measures i title visit us on the web www.100 pagepress.com download free electronic versions of the book from myspace http www.myspace.com/ownyourspace and facebook http www.facebook.com/ownyourspace.net and from own your space http www.ownyourspace.net rev 2.0

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this book is dedicated to every teen who takes the time to learn about security and how to stay safe and be smart online we also want to thank all of the teens joining this project and the teens who originally inspired this book eric and douglas.

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table of contents preface vii chapter 1 protect your turf 1 chapter 2 know your villains 7 chapter 3 nasty ware 29 chapter 4 hackers and crackers 45 chapter 5 taking spam off the menu 59 chapter 6 cyberbullies 73 chapter 7 phishing for dollars 83 chapter 8 safe cyber shopping 97 chapter 9 browsers bite back 115 chapter 10 private blogs and public places 137 chapter 11 going social 149 chapter 12 friends creeps and pirates 161 chapter 13 any port in a storm 175 chapter 14 look pa no strings 191 chapter 15 getting help 211 chapter 16 tweaks 223 appendix a a note to parents 239 acknowledgments 243 contributors 244 index 245

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preface linda mccarthy was inspired to write the first edition of own your space when the two teenagers in her house managed to destroy what she thought was a pretty darn secure home computer network linda was more inspired when she realized that douglas and eric weren t looking to break things or even trying to impress her when they brought down her home network they were just using the internet the way normal teenagers do since then this book has become a collaborative project to provide free security learning to teens and families online contributors to the 2010 edition include denise weldon-siviy a mother of four teacher and writer other experts we are adding to the team include specialists in firewalls networking and wireless systems as well as advanced mac and firefox users our design specialists and anime artists tie these concepts together in teen friendly form we also have several teens on the project and are adding new teens continually to keep the project current and fresh without that teen involvement this book and project would not exist for now and for later like malware that changes every day we plan to update this online version as needed to keep protecting our readers computer security is a moving target the ebook format allows us to run along side it was very important to us that this book be made available to all teens and families in need of security learning for that reason this book is made available for free online under the creative commons licensing creativecommons.org this project is made available through corporate sponsors and would not be possible without their support.

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viii own your space who this book is for this is a book for every teen and an essential resource for every parent and teacher especially though this is a book for the computer savvy keyboard-comfy teens who use the net every day and want to know how to secure their systems preserve their net lifestyles and protect their data this book provides important details to keep those teens their privacy their identities and their reputations safe in cyberspace in short this book is for normal teenagers like you we realize that you understand quite a bit about computers probably a lot more than your parents we also know from our own teens where the gaps in your computer knowledge tend to fall we wrote this book to address those gaps because we know your time is limited we ve kept this short and tried to focus on the important aspects of security we also kept it interesting by including real examples and case studies from real teenagers just like you even if you are a power user this book is still for you sure you ll know a number of the details we cover still we are willing to bet that you ll find a number of details you weren t aware of before and you ll certainly find a lot of detailed information you can share with a less enlightened friend sibling or parent who this book is still for just not quite 100 for while this is a book full of details it isn t a book full of numbered instructions we wanted to write a book you d want to sit down and read not another 400-page technical manual to any mac users we apologize for including only screenshots based on windows 7 much as we wanted to include all variations that just wasn t practical for this edition we will however be adding an appendix just for mac users soon still most of this book applies every bit as much to mac users as everyone else.

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preface ix what you ll learn this book is designed for any teen who is · in fear of drive-by downloads of nasty adware spyware and viruses · anxious about scareware and ransomware · trying to stay safe on social networking sites · concerned about online predators and identity thieves · scattering secrets to the wind in favorite hot spots · shopping online without protection · unsure of the risks about webcams and sexting · dealing with cyberbullies at home or in school · blogging alone and in the dark got a thought we ve love to hear your feedback on this book just send it to lindamccarth@gmail.com help save a forest and educate everyone in your school at the same time let your friends family and classmates know that this book is available for free on many corporate sponsor sites as well as on myspace myspace.com/ownyourspace facebook facebook.com/ownyourspace.net and at own your space ownyourspace.net

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chapter 1 protect your turf braden is a typical 14-year-old over the past 6 months he s grown three inches gained four shoe sizes and eaten his way through nearly a ton of pizza he s also unintentionally trashed his family s computer no less than 12 times first he downloaded some cool emoticons to use with his im messages those smiley faces came with embedded adware that overwhelmed him with pop-up ads and slowed down the speed of virtually everything then braden installed a free video game that contained a trojan program that let spammers in russia take over his computer and use it to forward junk email a few weeks later braden responded to what looked like a legitimate email asking him to confirm his facebook login information that phisher then used braden s login to post links to adware to braden s facebook friends not long after that braden clicked yes to install security software when a pop-up announced that his computer was infected with adware as you ve probably guessed that software installed more adware braden s mom has spent so much time and money having the family computer fixed that she s beginning to wonder if the internet is really worth the aggravation what she is sure of is that internet security has become a lot more complicated than it used to be

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2 chapter 1 since the internet s inception in the late 1970s the number of people who use the net has doubled every 9 to 14 months do the math and you ll see a phenomenal growth chart from 281 computers on the internet in 1981 to a dazzling 400 million in 2000 by 2009 worldwide usage passed 1.5 billion netizens internet usage in the u.s is nearing saturation levels netizen a citizen of cyberspace i.e the internet a netizen is any person using the internet to participate in online social communities when you confirm a new friend on facebook you are expanding your online social group you are being a good netizen while internet usage among adults has risen steadily internet usage among teenagers has soared as of june 2009 90 of american teens lived in homes with internet connections if you re part of that 90 it is especially important for you to understand how to protect your computer from nasty code as you ll learn later your computer is at special risk adware sites target teenagers just like you by focusing their efforts on websites you and your peers tend to visit online forums are targeted by pedophiles posing as teens even identify theft another potential consequence of nasty code can be especially nasty for teenagers still in the process of defining their financial and business identities if you use your parents computers you may also put their financial and personal information at risk for now just keep in mind that there s a lot more to internet security than running antivirus software and it s a lot more important than you probably realize over the next few chapters we ll talk about what you need to know and do to help keep yourself your computer and maybe even your parents safer when using the internet 1.1 a survey of malware malware is a generic term for a piece of malicious code that is programming code specifically developed to harm a computer or its data if you ve studied spanish or latin for that matter you ll know that mal means bad like malcontent an un-contented unhappy person or darth maul in star wars episode i the

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protect your turf 3 obvious bad guy dressed in red and sporting horns nothing good ever starts with mal malware is quite literally bad software malware programming code designed to harm a computer or its data since malicious code and malware mean the same thing for simplicity s sake we use the term malware throughout this book in the world of malware there are several standard types of villains we ll be covering all of these villains throughout the book but the main categories are · viruses · worms · trojans · bot armies · keystroke loggers · spyware · adware · scareware · ransomware you re probably already familiar with some of these categories for instance computer viruses are now so well-known in the popular culture that they provided the grand finale to the 1996 sci-fi thriller independence day if you ll recall will smith saved the day by helping jeff goldblum better known as ian malcolm of jurassic park to upload a computer virus to the mother ship disabling the alien space crafts force fields in real life viruses and worms have taken out entire unprotected networks in august 2009 attackers shut down twitter for nearly three hours leaving 44 million tweeters worldwide out of touch if that doesn t sound like a big deal imagine cnn or fox news being driven off the air for an afternoon.

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4 chapter 1 you are no doubt also familiar with antivirus software most but not all new computers now arrive fresh from the factory already preloaded with at least a trial version of one of the major antivirus packages usually that s norton antivirus trend micro mcafee or webroot for virus protection they are all excellent products you may not be aware however that antivirus software can t protect you against all types of attacks many people think as long as they have antivirus software installed that they are protected that s not true because several layers of security are needed to protect you antivirus software is only one of those layers before we take a look at the other layers of security it is important to understand what antivirus software can and cannot do think of your antivirus software as a series of vaccinations having a polio vaccination won t keep you from getting hepatitis likewise having antivirus software won t necessarily protect your computer from spyware or adware in fact if you don t routinely update your antivirus software it may not even protect you from viruses like their biological cousins computer viruses mutate just as you may need a new flu shot each winter to protect against new viral strains you also need to update your antivirus software continuously for other types of malware you may need other types of protection we ll explain these as we discuss the specific types of malware 1.2 protect your turf then surf when you buy a computer it is not secure you should never pull a computer out of the box and connect it to the internet unless you take steps to protect it think of your pc as a world traveler who needs vaccinations to avoid diseases in its travels in fact your new computer most likely is plagued with numerous security holes which are flaws in the way your computer s programs have been written that would make your computer vulnerable to attack just how serious the flaws in the code are determines how much access an attacker or that attacker s malware can gain warning uneducated programmers programming mistakes security holes!

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