The big fear on the Internet these days is the security of information. Can anyone get my phone number or home address? Can anyone get my credit card numbers? Can somebody out on the Internet screw up my computer while I’m connected? These are all good questions and asked quite often. The general rule of thumb to follow is nobody else can get what you don’t give them. If you choose to purchase products or services over the Internet, make sure you are dealing with a reputable company. I wouldn’t hesitate to give Microsoft my credit card number over the Internet but I might be wary about giving it to "Fred’s Discount Goods" in Nowhere Alabama.

While you are connected to the Internet, the information anyone can get from you is what you enter into the configuration of your various client programs. One big issue on the Internet these days is unsolicited advertising. Some companies run through the newsgroups, getting people’s e-mail addresses from the message headers and flooding them with e-mail (cyber junk mail). This isn’t illegal, but can be rather annoying. The newsgroups are bad for this. To stop this kind of thing from happening, when you configure your news client, use a false email address such as me@here.com. This normally isn’t the best advice, and you may want to receive e-mail from others you may converse with in some manner through the net. There’s no law against being anonymous on the Internet, as long as you act accordingly. One other way to keep your peace is some e-mail clients have filters on them that will just delete messages with certain content. However, you are still using your Internet time to download the messages.

There is no possibility for you to have someone on the Internet to screw up your computer. The only way someone can access your computer is if you are set up as a server of some kind, which in almost all cases, you have to do intentionally like installing an FTP server on your computer. The only risks involved are mostly trivial ones. You can be e-mail bombed. This is the process of someone sending you hundreds of email messages containing garbage or other useless material. This still can’t damage your system, it’s just annoying. If you find that you are being bombed, hounded, harassed, etc. Give us a call. We can’t exactly have the offending person arrested, but actions such as e-mail bombing are considered damaging to our servers, and we can possibly follow up and stop the information from hitting us.

That brings us to the illegal activities on the Internet. Things such as software piracy, child pornography and credit card fraud are big, and easy to get to. The best advice is to just stay away. There is nothing wrong with pornographic material, as long as it’s legal and handled in a responsible manner. Durham.Net is not concerned with what actions our subscribers perform on the Internet. You are entirely responsible for your actions. However if these actions cause Durham.Net damage in any way or if we are contacted by a System Administrator of another system with a complaint, we will be required to take any action necessary to stop such activities. Chances are you will spend your time on the Internet getting the information you need. If you are a victim of risky activities on the Internet, there is only so much we can do but we are here to help you as well.