Protecting Your Computer and Data

Abstract

It’s easy to take for granted that your computer will always work well, and that everything you store on it will be kept safe for your own use and no others. But you will be in a world of sadness, anger, and frustration if you can no longer access your pictures, music, documents, videos, games, or email messages. There are many things that can happen in a blink of an eye that either take away what you saved on your computer or make your computer entirely unusable:

• Your hard drive crashes. It’s not a question of “if,” it’s a question of when. Eventually, every hard drive fails. We just hope it doesn’t happen while we still own that computer.

• It can take less than a minute for hackers or other computers on the Web to attack an unprotected computer connected to the Internet.

• One short electrical surge that barely blinks your lights may be enough to fry your computer’s motherboard and circuits.

• You only turn your back for a brief moment at the library or the airport security checkpoint, and your laptop disappears.

• You hear a familiar voice greeting you at the coffee shop, and when you turn to see who it is, you knock over your cup — spilling it all over your laptop keyboard.

• You click a link in an email message from a friend, and all of a sudden weird stuff happens on your computer because you just downloaded a malicious program.