Child Safety Features for Internet Explorer 8

My thanks are due to a MicroMart Magazine article (Issue 1094, 18-24 Feberuary 2010) entitled "The Panic Button".

Microsoft have created a panic button so that, when youngsters are on-line and feel they are getting harassed in any way, they can seek immediate advice and help.

The button has been introduced in conjunction with the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP), and further information and downloads are available from the CEOP website:

www.clickceop.net/ie8

It's another way of enabling youngsters to use the web safely, and for their parents/carers to feel they are doing their bit to protect and educate vulnerable web users.

Microsoft Support for Earlier Versions of Windows

Microsoft will not support earlier versions of Windows for ever - it's a sad fact, but true.

Support for Windows includes updates and security patches, the latter vital if you are to keep one step ahead of the malware-creaters.

The good news is that support for Windows XP will continue - so long as you have Service Pack 3 installed.

The bad news is that support for Windows 2000 (is anyone still using that version???) ends completely from 13 July 2010.

Vista users should also check that they have the latest Service Pack, as the earliest version of Vista (January 2007) will not be supported after 13 April 2010, unless at least Service Pack 1 is installed.

But above all else, keep your Microsoft products up-to-date. Remember, the second Tuesday/Wednesday every month is Microsoft Update Day.

Adobe Reader Update

Please check your version of (free) Adobe Reader. The latest version is 9.3.1

It's important to keep Adobe Reader up to date, as there was a security "hole" in an earlier version.

Backing Up Your Emails

Even when people back up their important files (business accounts and documents, pictures, music collection, etc), emails are often left out. That's a pity, as losing our stored emails would be quite a disaster, especially as many of us organise our saved emails into folders.

In those folders, we store all sorts of important information, including: access details (username, password) for some software or websites; email addresses; copies of documents sent to us as attachments to messages; other attachments, such as pictures; messages containing information we want to store.

Just looking at that list gives us some indication of how much important information could be lost if emails could not be retrieved in the event of the failure of, say, a hard disk.

Backing up emails is not hard, and there is free software to make the process painless. The choice of program to use depends to an extent on how you access your emails. Those of you who go to a website for your emails (so-called "webmail") need not fret, as your emails are stored and organised away from your hard disk. Webmail is possibly the safest way, and also allows you to send and receive emails wherever you can connect to the internet.

However, many of us choose to use a program that uses our computer's hard disk to collect, send, and store our messages.

I use Mozilla's Thunderbird as my email program, and there is a useful backup program called MozBackup that not only backs up my emails, but also backs up Mozilla's Firefox browser.

For those of you who use Microsoft's Outlook or Outlook Express there are some choices to be had; the best thing is to go to the best information on this topic, at:

http://www.techsupportalert.com/content/best-free-email-backup-utility.htm

So, I strongly recommend backing up your emails, and like all backups, store your backups somewhere away from your main hard disk - on a memory stick, or an external hard drive, for example.