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Networking Sites



Since pretty much all of us use Facebook, we all know about the privacy issues surrounding your personal information. There was a story about a guy getting information from about 100 million users in a compiled PDF for the world to see. If you don't want to be like those idiots, follow some simple guidelines.

1. Friends Only Please. Set your profile to "Friends Only", that way only your friends can see what you do on your page.
2. More Friends /= More Fun. Don't add just anyone. Research who that person is first, see what mutual friends you guys have. If the mutual friends are people you could care less about, then chances are the person requesting friendship will be the same.
3. No Random Clickie. Don't randomly click on links. Just because its one of your friends who sent you the link of this really funny clip they want you to see, doesn't make the link safe. Clicking on suspicious links will send you to websites designed to scan your computer for sensitive information which will be relayed to a 3rd party for malicious use.
4. Molester's Dream. For those of you with kids. To protect against child molesters and pedophiles with photoshop skills, please do not put your child as your Facebook profile picture.
5. Shame On You. For those of you who still use MySpace and you're over the age of 18, shoot yourself.

General Computer Maintenance



This area is where most of you would *** up since no one really thinks about defragging their hard drive or doing a disk clean-up until the ***hits the fan.

1. Maintain Your Anti-Virus. Get a free anti-virus program - www.avast.com -. If you are using Norton or MacCafee, either keep up the subscription or switch to free-base when it expires. Nothing worse than having expired or no anti-virus protection. Schedule a full scan once a week to keep yourself free of viruses and buggies.
2. Run scheduled clean-up. Disk Defragmenter, and Disk Clean-up can be found in the System Tools folder in Accessories. Start > Accessories > System Tools.
3. Keep your computer updated. Ever seen that little yellow shield in the lower-right corner that says your updates are ready? That is what Im talking about. You can find Windows (Microsoft) Update at Start > All Programs > Top of the list.
4. Be Organized. There is a reason there are pre-made folders called My Documents, My Pictures, My Music. Use them.
5. Keep your desktop from getting cluttered. Your computer tends to load slower if you have too much clutter on your desktop. So clean it up.
6. Limit Your Start-Up Programs. Having too many programs start up when you start Windows (Msn, Limewire, etc) also slows down your computer. To disable the start-up option for your programs, go to Start > Run (For XP Users), then type in MSCONFIG, then go to the Start-Up tab. For Vista/Windows 7 users, the shortcut to that is Windows Key + R. Then follow the same steps from there.
7. Back Up Your Data. Whether its your pics of the 5000 different angles of your ugly face, or 10000 pics of your drunk days, or all the *** songs and porn you have, you still need to back up your data.
8. Ventilation. Heat will destroy your computer (literally), so keep your desktop computer in a ventilated area (off the ground and close to a window).
9. Dust Your Computer. Dust collects on the circuits in your computer and cause it to screw around. Get a few cans of Air Duster, open your case and spray out all the dust. No one likes dust bunnies.

General Web Surfing



For those of you who still use Internet Explorer, STOP USING IT! IE is not as functional or user-friendly as Firefox or Google Chrome.

1. Get Firefox or Google Chrome. If you like browsers that have cool extensions (Firefox) or are simple in design (Chrome), then pick your browser.
2. For Firefox users, two extensions that you MUST HAVE are AdBlockPlus and NoScript. AdBlock Plus gets rid of those pesky ads that you see on the side of the pages, while NoScript disables web scripts from running when you visit a site (which is useful when you dont know the site).
3. Msn Messenger is a great way to keep in touch with friends and family, but it is also a target by network sniffers. Msn messages are in the Clear Text, which means your messages can be seen as is by people who might be spying on your conversation. Because of those, it is advised to not share sensitive data over any messenger program (Msn,Yahoo, etc).
4. Online Scams. None of you are benefactors to some unknown overseas fortune that some random dead person left behind for you. None of you will get a check from Bill Gates, none of you are targets of love interests by women/men who got stuck overseas and needing a way back home, and none of you can make millions of dollars by sitting on your *** at home doing nothing. Rule of thumb when cruising the web, If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is.
5. For those of you who have Safari Web Browser installed on a Windows-based PC, UNINSTALL IT! Safari is a lolMAC-Based operating system, not Windows.
6. Enough with the Toolbars. Most programs that are installed, there is an option to install a toolbar (Ask, Google, Bing, Skype, etc) in your browser. Most of those toolbars are installed on your IE browser. If you have more than ONE toolbar, disable and uninstall it. Toolbars are like little spies that watch what you do online and report back to 3rd-party companies that track your whereabouts.

Email Security



I'm sure you all use some sort of web-based email accounts (hotmail, yahoo, gmail, etc), so here are a few ways to keep yourself safe.

1. Use strong passwords. An 8-character password consisting of symbols @ ! #, numbers 1 2 3, and Upper/Lower case letters can be cracked by a super computer within 83 1/2 days. An 8-character password that only consists of either letters, numbers, or both with no symbols can be cracked with one hour. I'm willing to bet most of you have passwords that can be cracked within minutes. Use passwords that are between 8 and 15 characters long, that consist of Upper/lower case letters, numbers, AND symbols.
2. Set your mailing list to Exclusive, that way you won't get all those pesky junk mail in your inbox.
3. Do not reply to scam emails. Those online scams that appear in your inbox, do not reply to them. That is how they get your email information and use your address to sign you up to all kinds of weird ***.



Shortcuts for Windows XP/Vista/Windows 7 Users



For All three systems:

1. ALT + F4 - closes a browser, window, or exits a program
2. ALT + TAB - cycles through opened programs
3. CRTL + N - opens a new browser window
4. CRTL + T - opens a new tab in existing browser window
5. CRTL + TAB - cycles through opened tabs in existing window
6. CRTL + F5 - force reloads web page
7. CRTL + F4 - closes highlighted tab in a browser window

For Vista/Windows 7 Users:

1. Windows Key + TAB - cycles through opened programs (with style)