CABLE AND DSL USERS:
Protect Yourself Online

by Dr. Anna C. McFadden, Institute for Interactive Technology
College of Human and Environment Sciences
The University of Alabama
(Written for the Principal's Electronic Desk
of the National Association of Elementary School Principals)

If you spend long periods of time online or have a cable or DSL connection, you need to protect your computer with a personal firewall, which typically is a piece of software.  The main reason is because cable and DSL services provide the user with a  static or "unchanging" IP number (the address that is assigned to your computer to connect to the internet to send and
receive information) every time a connection is made to the internet.  Most of the time, cable and DSL users never disconnect from the internet, meaning, in a sense, that the door to their computer is always open! Intruders may try to find your IP number in order to enter your computer and steal sensitive data such as bank account information, files, and/or passwords.  Since, with cable and DSL your IP number does not change, someone has located it, then door remains open, so to speak!

In a typical day, someone's computer may have hundreds of "pings" from unknown users trying to gain access to the computer. A ping is an Internet utility that can be used o determine whether a particular IP address is online, meaning you! In other words, they 'ping' to find out if you are on, and if you are, then, via your unchanged IP on your cable or DSL connection, someone may try to enter your computer.

Cable and DSL users can protect their computers with a personal firewall package. When you install the software, it will allow you to determine what your computer can receive and transmit over the internet.  A real favorite personal firewall software is Zone Alarm, (ZA) which is free for personal use; it's popularity is due in part to the fact that is easy to install and to set up, in addition to being free for personal use.

Zone Alarm will give you pop-up alerts to let you know when someone is trying to "ping" or access your computer.  It will also provide you with that IP address and Zone Alarm will try to locate that user. There's an Application Control that monitors all outbound Internet traffic to prevent illegal applications from transferring your valuable data to a hacker. No application can communicate with  the Internet without your approval. One of the best features is Zone Alarm's MailSafe-email attachment
protection which prevents you from opening an email attachment that has a virus.

The key feature is that Zone Alarm is capable of allowing your computer to be on the Internet in stealth mode, which means that no one can detect  your presence on the internet, therefore they cannot access your computer or your files. Principals have reported testing this feature!  One principal just could not believe that it worked so well.  She called a friend in the computer department at a near-by university and  gave him her IP address so he could try to access her computer.  Zone Alarm sent her  a pop-up message letting her know that someone was trying to access her computer.  In addition, Zone Alarm gave her the IP address of the hopeful lurker... which in this case was her friend from the university! Thus she could tell that he was trying to get into her computer, as she had asked.  Further, it didn't work! He could not locate her computer to tell if she was online or not. She was 'in stealth mode' for sure!

There are many other other personal firewall packages such as Norton's Internet Security, McAfee's Personal
Firewall,  and Symantec's  Norton Personal Firewall 2001, which range in price from $29.95 - $79.95.  If you want to check your security on your your computer go to:  DSL Reports or Shields Up