Internet Hard Drives

An Internet hard drive is storage space on a server that is accessible from the Internet. In most cases, a computer user subscribes to the storage service and agrees to rent a block of storage space for a specific period of time. Instead of sending e-mail attachments to share with family and friends, you might simply post the files to your Internet hard drive and then allow them to be viewed or retrieved by others. You might save backup copies of critical files or all the data on your hard disk to your Internet hard drive. The key advantage of this type of remote storage is the ability to access data from multiple locations. You can access your files from any device that can connect with the Internet, so everything you store on the site is available to you at any time. Some disadvantages are that your data may not be secure; the storage device might become corrupt, causing you to lose your data; and the company offering the Internet storage may go out of business.

Computer Viruses

A computer virus is hidden code within a program that may damage or destroy the infected files. Like living viruses, computer viruses require a host (such as a program file), and they’re designed to make copies of themselves. Typically, virus infections spread when somebody inserts a disk containing an infected program into a computer and then starts the infected program. You might also get a virus by downloading an infected program from the Internet. Most viruses are called file infectors because they attach themselves to a program file. When the program is executed, the virus spread to other programs on the user hard disk. Should you a copy a file on your computer to a disk and give it to someone, the infection spreads even further. Most computer viruses are spread by e-mail attachments. When you open an e-mail you may see a dialog box asking whether you want to open an attachment. Don’t open it unless you’re sure the attachment is safe. Consider the following scenario. A professor with large lecture section of 100 students receives an e-mail from a former student with an attachment named “Spring Break” that apparently contains a picture of the student’s spring break and so opens it. The attachment appears to do nothing, and the professor goes about his or her business. The attachment, however, is doing something. It is sending a copy of itself or everyone in the professor’s email address box-including each of the 100 students in the class. Now the attachment is propagating to the e-mail address lists of each of the students. The attachment is received by parents, friends, other professors, and fellow students. Many open the attachment, and the process accelerates very rapidly. Executable file attachments pose the most serious risk.

Avoiding E-Commerce Hazards

There are many benefits to engaging in e-commerce, it also entails risks. These risks include identify theft, personal information exposure, money loss, and being ripped-off by unscrupulous charlatans. To protect yourself you should carefully create user names and passwords, particularly at sites where you must pay for goods or services. You should avoid e-commerce with little-known companies; at least you’ve taken the opportunity to check their legitimacy. You can check on shopping portals how other shoppers rate a new retailers before buying from one. Even though you are most likely protected from monetary losses by your credit card company, you should always be careful when giving out your credit card information, and you should only do so on secure sites. Never share credit card or account numbers or user name and password information with others; even if you receive and e-mail requesting that information from what seems to be a legitimate source. Some of the things you should look for on a secure site (one that is protected from intrusion of your personal business by others) are the https:// protocol in the address of the site instead of the usual http://. The added “s” stands for “hypothecate site”. Other things you can look for are the VeriSign logo, the golden lock symbol, or a logo from other site-security entities such as Verified by Visa. Another security alert is a message box that indicates “You are entering (or leaving) a secure Website. It is the seller who decides which vendor to use for the goods/payment transaction. For instance, if you see the PayPal Logo on eBay auction item site, it means that you can use PayPal as a payment option. In fact, sometimes this is the only option available. The PayPal Web site even offers a tool to help you manage your buying experience. The PayPal Auction Finder searches eBay for items you’ve recently won and prefills your payment from with details taken straight from the item listing. With Auction Finder, you can eliminate errors and pay for your items instantly. Always use extra care and caution whenever you conduct financial transactions on the Internet.

Online Banking

Online banking enables you to use a Web browser to access your accounts, balance your checkbook, transfer funds, and even pay bills online. In fact, nearly 7 percent of Americans used online banking services by end of 2002. The use of online banking expected to grow 14 percent per year by end of 2007. By that time, some 30 percent of Americans (67 million individuals) will be using online banking services. Currently, banks that offer online banking gain a competitive advantage over those that do not, because most customers now consider it a necessary and expected service, like ATM’s. Online banking helps banks cut down on the expenses for maintaining bank branches and paying tellers and allows them to provide advanced levels of electronic customer service. Banks implement online banking in different ways. One method makes use of personal finance programs such as Microsoft Money or Intuit’s Quicken, enabling customers to balance their checkbooks automatically. An advantage of this to customers is that Microsoft Money and Quicken offer powerful features for budgeting and analyzing spending habits. The drawback of this method, however, is that you can only access your online bank accounts from the computer that holds all the Money or Quicken data. Easier online banking tools are Web-based systems that require only one program: a Web browser. All the data are stored on the bank’s computer, not your own, which means that you can access your account from any computer connected to the Internet. Although Web-based online banking doesn’t offer the advanced budgeting and analysis features that Money and Quicken do it’s much easier to use because you are directly manipulating your accounts online instead of recording copies of your work in offline programs.

Online Grocery Shopping

If you’ve got lots of money and can afford to pay for the savings in the time inconvenience of traditional shopping trips, online grocery shopping may be for you. Once you start looking at the concept more closely, it doesn’t sound so crazy. For the price of a good bottle of wine, you can select your groceries from an online grocery store and have them delivered to your home. You can recurrent transactions so that you receive needed perishables, such as milk and eggs, on a fixed schedule. Some online supermarkets even offer budgeting, automatically tracking your expenditures so that you can stay within the limits you’ve set. Some consumers have found one very important to online grocery shopping: It cuts down on impulse buying. Online grocery stores can be broken into two groups: pure play (there is not physical store that you can visit) and partnerships (there is a bricks-and-mortar store as well as an online presence). Most of the pure-play start-ups have gone out of business due to the large overhead required to warehouse large numbers of items that may or may not sell. Conversely, traditional grocery stores are now developing a Web presence. In this case, instead of layering the Internet over a traditional store, the traditional store is layering itself with the internet. Many other businesses are concluding that they must have an internet presence or they’ll soon be out of business.