Useful

As someone who is studying you will probably have a laptop which you’ll use to produce much of your coursework and to research various things.  You may also find yourself using shared computers in locations such as your University campus, internet cafés, the library, and other places where you’ll do your research, and then save data to a pen drive or other portable media device, ready to put onto your own computer later on.  When you’re using shared computers like this, and also carrying a laptop around and accessing the internet in different locations, it’s important to make sure you safeguard your computer from various risks such as viruses, hackers and so on

Viruses
It is important to make sure your computer is kept safe from viruses as when a virus invades your computer it can wipe information, or give hackers access to your security details.

·         Install a good quality anti-virus software, there are lots available some are free, others you will need to pay for, but which ever you go for, make sure you keep it up to date and that it does everything you need it to do.

·         Scan your computer daily for viruses – if you find one, do something to fix the problem immediately, waiting generally makes the problem worse.

·         Make sure your virus software is set not just to scan your computer, but also any media you put into it such as CDs, DVDs, Pen drives etc.

·         Never open attachments in e-mails or via msn or anywhere else, without scanning them first.

Firewalls
Make sure you have a good firewall installed on your computer.  When you’re using a laptop that you’re connecting to different systems all the time, it’s very important to have this working properly and turned on all the time.  This is your primary method of stopping someone from hacking into your computer system.

Passwords and Usernames
Your passwords and usernames are the things that make your ID unique on the internet, so it’s important to make sure that no one else knows what your passwords are, and that you keep them safe at all times.

·         You may well think that your password is something no one else would guess, but often people can guess these, so it is important to make sure that what ever the password is, you change it regularly.

·         Make sure your password is hard to guess, go with at least 8 characters, use random letters, numbers, and non-alpha-numeric keys as well to make it harder to guess.

·         Never store your username or password on a shared computer

·         Always remember to log out of your e-mail and any other sites you have to sign into before you finish using a shared computer.

·         Use a different password for each account you have, if you use the same one for lots of places, if someone does manage to hack it, then they will have access to everything.

Updates
Make sure you keep your computer updated regularly for all the basic software systems that you run on it.  Most operating systems such as Windows will create patches (small pieces of data) that are designed to fix problems that people have found.  If you don’t update your computer regularly, then you will leave yourself more open to attacks by virus or hackers.

Thanks