This is a placeholder and outline for a work-in-progress.  The final version may differ somewhat; as always, I am providing basic information and a list of related links to tide you over until the "real thing" appears here (shortly):

The Mozilla Navigator and Firefox Internet browsers (both free) and the Opera browser (free version available) are more secure by design than Internet Explorer (IE), which should be used sparingly (generally, only when absolutely necessary).  Maxthon (also free) adds useful features and extensions to IE when you must use it.  Unfortunately, IE is tightly integrated with Windows, so it's a security threat--and must be kept updated--even if you never use it (except for Windows Update)!

Privacy and security threats include phishing and pharming (also known as DNS poisoning).

If you are running Windows XP, Service Pack 2 should be installed.  To find out if it is, point to the My Computer icon, right-click, go to the Properties window, and read the Windows version and patch status there.
Note: Microsoft is not allowing illegal copies of XP to install Service Pack 2.  While I can understand their reasoning, this is becoming a serious security problem, and even legal owners will suffer as a result.

Learn about e-mail in general.

Free and/or disposable email addresses are useful to protect the privacy of your main e-mail address (even if you don't already have one).  A free address can also help provide continuity if you change service providers (for example, dropping AOL for Comcast), since your free address does not change in this case.

Never respond to spam, even to opt out.

Mozilla Mail and Thunderbird (both free) are more secure than Outlook or Outlook Express (OE)--and have built-in spam filtering.  Older versions of Outlook and OE cannot be secured and must, like IE, be kept updated to the current versions.

A recent 2600 Magazine article talked about erasing anti-virus software from a user's hard drive by means of, essentially, a Trojan; also some malware disables virus software, as well as the Windows utilities regedit and msconfig.  I think that I was ahead of the curve on this one; for some time now I have been installing anti-virus and anti-spyware software (and similar utilities) to non-default locations--in other words, don't always accept the programs' default installation locations.  I'm proud to say that Grisoft, at my suggestion, added the ability to install the AVG anti-virus to non-default locations in the newest version.  I install to directories with names like Tools, Utils, or Security.  It may seem like a minor thing, but it is easy to do and it provides at least a little extra security.  This is one case where security-by-obscurity may actually help.

Last revised: Wednesday, 08-June-2005.  Copyright © 2005 Michael Rudas. All rights reserved.  The opinions expressed in this article are not necessarily those of the other members of the Oak Park Computer Club.  All trademarks are the property of their respective owners.  This article was created using the EditPad Classic text editor and the Nvu HTML editor, both free.  Permission is hereby granted to publish this article in an unmodified form, except for formatting (contact me for other changes).  Technical questions and help requests can be directed to my tech-support mailbox, the link to which can be found on this site or the OPCC site.  Greetings from Royal Oak, Michigan!