Introduction

Does your computer sometimes crash for no reason—or act strangely? Are you seeing unexpected lag or sudden dropouts when playing online games? Has your Internet connection gotten slower? Are mysterious pop-up windows appearing at strange times? Have you discovered that someone has impersonated you on an instant messenger program without your knowledge? Are you OK with strangers (or friends or family members) knowing everything you do on your computer? Have you ever wondered which of those amazing e-mail offers are actually true?

This book was inspired by a call I recently received from my nephew. For some reason, his computer desktop was just vanishing at random times—usually a few minutes after turning on his system. It turned out his computer had been infected with a nasty program called a computer virus.

Now my nephew is smart. He knows not to download and run programs unless he knows where they come from. He knows what a virus is. Yet, to my surprise, he didn’t have an up-to-date virus protection program on his computer.

The next week I helped a friend of his out whose computer was attacked by another program called a Trojan—I’ll tell you more about that in the book.

It turns out that teens actually have more sophisticated security needs than most adults. It’s not enough for you to know about firewalls—you need to know how to keep one up while playing online games. You’re much more likely than most adults to be using Kazaa or other peer-to-peer file services, and you’re much more likely to be downloading files. The kinds of identity theft you are likely to experience are very different from those experienced by your parents. And because in many families teens know more about computers than their parents, it can sometimes be difficult to find help when problems occur.

This book covers all of these issues and more. It’s a book about computer security—the first one ever written for teens and young adults. It goes far beyond the usual “beware the dangers of chat rooms” warnings to teach you everything you need to know to protect your computer, your privacy, and yourself.

Even if you are a beginner now, by the time you finish this book, you’ll know more about computer security than almost everyone you know. You’ll know how to clean viruses off a system (and maybe even get paid for it). You’ll learn how antivirus tools and firewalls work—and how they can fail! You’ll know how to play online games without opening your system to attack by outsiders. You’ll know how to surf the web and shop without leaving traces for advertisers (and others) to follow. You’ll even know about cyberterrorism, and how you can help prevent it.

And best of all, you’ll be able to help your friends and family members clean up and secure their systems. Because let’s face it—they probably need all the help they can get.