Web.Edu: How Internet Courses Work

Managing Your Computer:

Background. Especially if you are taking an online class and using your own computer, that computer becomes even more important. Taking good care of it, and preventing crashes, is important. Here are some guidelines for taking that good care. You need to be concerned about passwords, crashes, viruses, losing files, and keeping track of new required software.

Are they after you? Some people think that they will not be the target of a computer attack. It's just you, you're not super-rich, etc. Think again. Some hackers are just in it for kicks, and they can get their kicks by hacking you, just as much as if they hack anyone else. But in addition, hacking your computer can pay off financially. There are now organized rings of hackers that sell the use of hacked computers such as yours. These rings will sell a month on your computer as part of a package deal. They will set up software on your computer so that their paying clients can use it to send email, store illegal files such as child pornography or copyrighted files.

Warez (not "jaurez" but wares with a z) is a system that hackers use to put software on your computer to distribute files over the Internet, often illegal files, which they also download to your computer. The purpose is to use your computer as a sales platform for distributing these files. Orders may be taken and money collected on a separate computers, then customers directed to you for delivery. This software can also use your computer as a platform for taking over other computers for the same purpose.

Passwords. Passwords can be strong, weak, or in between. To be secure, you should use strong passwords. Here are some guidelines for passwords (many taken from the C&IT web site).

1. Examples of weak passwords 
   1. A dictionary word. Hackers can back up an electronic dictionary to your login and run through all of the possibilities very quickly.
   2. A dictionary word spelled backwards.
   3. Your name, your user name, names of your spouse, children or other relatives. Does not matter if they are spelled backwards.
2. Computers used by hackers can guess passwords randomly and try them. Here are some ways to frustrate this approach: 
   1. Use a minimum of six characters so there is more guessing to be done.
   2. Use a wide variety of characters so there is more guessing to be done. If you use only lower-case letters (this is common), that is only 26 guesses to make per character. Put in some uppercase, numbers and special characters such as !, @, and #, and you are up to about 75 guesses per character. For our six-character password, we have gone from three hundred million possible passwords to nearly two hundred billion passwords, or nearly six hundred times more passwords to guess.
   3. Today we all have several if not many passwords. Do not use the same password everywhere. Use a variety of passwords. Make the hackers work harder.
3. Some ways to construct strong passwords 
   1. Use the first or last letters of a phrase, such as mhall from the first letters of Mary Had a Little Lamb, or ydaeb from the last letters, although this one does not have the minimum of six letters.
   2. Run two dictionary words together that are not often associated. For example, you could combine base and ball to make baseball but this is a common word itself. On the other hand, combining base and bat to make basebat is an unusual combination, and is therefore better.
   3. Make an arbitrary combination of upper case, lower case and special characters, such as aEQ!y&23.
   4. If learning a separate and distinct password for every location is too much, you can make an easily remembered customized password for each place you go by taking a password from any of the above methods and adding, either at the beginning or the end, either the first two three letters, or the last two or three, of the place you are going to log into. For example if we take the last two letters of the location, and your base password is ydaeb, your password for WSU would be ydaebSU and for Amazon would be ydaebon.
4. General
   1. Do not let your computer memorize your passwords. This is always good advice, but particularly for a lab or public situation, where anyone could walk up to the computer and log in as you.
   2. Make sure to log out of any system you can, when you are done using it. Otherwise the next person using the computer could use your account, at least before your logout times out from inactivity.

Protecting against computer crashes.

1. Prevention
   1. Be cautious.
   2. Do not click on free Internet offers, or offers that seem to good to be true. Do not download files unless you know the sender and expect a file (your friend's email may have been hacked, so make sure you expect that file from this person.).
   3. Install and use Adaware (http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware) and/or Spybot (http://www.safer-networking.org/en/download) to keep your computer free from spyware that can also slow down its operation.
   4. Install and use an anti-virus program. All WSU faculty, staff and students have free access to Symantec anti-virus software from the WSU C&IT website (http://support.wayne.edu/download/index.php), one of the top anti-virus programs around. It is a good idea to set this or any other anti-virus program as follows:
      • Automatic regular updates of the virus definition files
      • Automatic scans of any files that you open, download or bring in on a portable disk
   5. Consider a "Computer Security Suite" that includes a firewall and assorted other safeguards. Symantic and Mcafee are the two companies that sell such suites; either one is good.
2. Be prepared for a crash
   1. Keep backup copies of your course files, using a USB thumb drive, for example.
   2. Consider a backup systems such as a Zip or other large-capacity drive, and backup software, or a web-based backup service

Keeping track of your files. Probably everyone has lost a computer file, at least temporarily. Guard against this, especially for your course files. Here are some methods:

1. When saving your files for the first time, using the "Save As..." dialog:
   1. Choose a meaningful or descriptive name
   2. Keep the default extension
2. Use a meaningful system of folders
3. Windows offers several tools for finding files
   1. When displaying your files using "My Documents," "My Computer," or Windows Explorer, change the "View" menu item to show "Details" and click twice on the date column heading. This lists the newest files at the top, and the file you recently lost is likely to be up there.
   2. You can search for files on a drive by displaying the drive icon in "My Documents," "My Computer," or Windows Explorer, right-clicking on it, choosing the item "Search" or "Find" depending on your version of Windows, and typing in search criteria (any or all of name, part of name, extension, date).
4. Consider Google Desktop (http://desktop.google.com) that can quickly search for text inside files, as well as file names

Keeping track of new software. This can be a problem if your course requires new software. Here are a few tips:

1. Make sure the software is installed using a standard Windows installer, so that you can remove and reinstall it if needed
2. Make sure to install help files, tutorials and example files, if they are available.
3. Take a look at the online help before you need it. Especially look for a "tour" of the software.
4. Find out if there is a source of more direct help, such as the Department, the Instructor or the WSU Computer Help Desk (helpdesk@wayne.edu or 313-577-4778 M-F 8 AM - 8 PM