Desktop Systems Security

Available to: Undergraduate Students, Graduate Students, Faculty and Staff

In addition to SPAM and viruses, you need to be aware of the risks involved with Adware, Spyware, and cookies. Each of these has the potential, in the hands of unscrupulous programmers to affect your privacy, cause mischief, or destabilize your computer. Your best protection is a healthy skepticism about visiting and downloading from unknown Web sites and about opening e-mail from unrecognized sources.

Adware is software that displays advertisements on your computer. These are ads that inexplicably pop up on your display screen, even if you're not browsing the Internet. Some companies provide "free" software in exchange for advertising on your display. It's how they make their money.

Spyware is software that sends your personal information to a third party without your permission or knowledge. This can include information about Web sites you visit or something more sensitive like your user name and password. Unscrupulous companies often use this data to send you unsolicited targeted advertisements.

Source: “How to Protect Your Computer from Spyware and Adware”, Jerry Honeycutt (http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/security/expert/honeycutt_spyware.mspx)

Cookies are messages that a Web server transmits to a Web browser so that the Web server can keep track of the user's activity on a specific Web site. Cookies do not act maliciously on computer systems. They are merely text files that can be deleted at any time - they are not plug-ins nor are they programs. Cookies cannot be used to spread viruses and they cannot access your hard drive. This does not mean that cookies are not relevant to a user's privacy and anonymity on the Internet. Cookies cannot read your hard drive to find out information about you; however, any personal information that you give to a Web site, including credit card information, will most likely be stored in a cookie unless you have turned off the cookie feature in your browser. In only this way are cookies a threat to privacy. The cookie will only contain information that you freely provide to a Web site.

Source: “Do Cookies Compromise Security? (http://www.webopedia.com/DidYouKnow/Internet/2002/Cookies.asp)