Most of what individual users can do is to be aware of the major problems in security, and to report suspicious activity to their system administrators. But make no mistake - individual computers can have an enormous impact on the security of a site, even if they are behind a firewall. This is because often (even usually) if a single host is compromised it endangers the security of other hosts close to it. And if these proximate hosts can be broken into, hosts that are near the newly compromised hosts will also be placed in danger, ad absurdum.
Rather than attempt to go over all of the possible problems that a user or client host can get themself into, here are some commonly asked questions and some corresponding answers:
The two most popular activities on the Internet are sending and reading e-mail and browsing the WWW. Both have been fairly safe activities in the past, but as more Internet services (like the WWW, Java, etc.) are offered, these client programs (naturally) add new features to take advantage of the them. However, this added complexity in the programs and protocols, along with the associated bugs and problems, can have deleterious effects to security. A good example of this is the "Winword Macro Virus", which, until advanced and feature-(over?)laden word processors were tightly integrated with mail programs, would not have been more than a thought experiment. And the Netscape and Microsoft Web browsers each have assorted bugs that could potentially compromise, delete, and list the files on the computer it's run on.
Having the newest and latest piece of hardware or software isn't always that great, especially with respect to security.
Despite all that I've said, Windows 95/3.1 PC's and Mac's are reasonably secure; as of this writing (late '96) it is very difficult for a system cracker to break into your machine, for example. This is not true for more powerful OS's (operating systems) such as Windows-NT, Linux, and other popular Unix-based OS's that have much more power, flexibility, and security problems associated with them.
The Internet is a very powerful tool for communication, entertainment, and research, but it does have its problems. Simply be informed and aware of them, take intelligent actions when you encounter a problem, and you should be able to enjoy it. Hopefully things will get better WRT security, but it probably won't in the near future.
A: In the worst case, there isn't much you can do. A CERT advisory can be forged to the point where it even comes from the CERT home machine! Add to this the significant problem that most people get messages like this forwarded from a friend urging them to forward this to other friends, and, unlike with something like a chain-letter, people feel that they are "helping" their pals by resending it! And because the technical details in such a thing are usually so vague, it's hard to say what is real or not.
However, if the warning doesn't come from an agency that you've heard of and doesn't contain a URL, digital signature, and a valid phone number or other contact information that you can use to check the veracity of the advisory, then don't trust it.
A: In terms of security, believe it or not, it is usually better to go with the huge, monolithic corporate ISP's. This is because they typically hand-hold you and keep you relatively safe (and the Internet safe from you) behind a very restrictive firewall (one reason for this is because if one of their customers got broken into they'd be crucified in the popular press.) With a local ISP you often have more flexibility and capabilities to interact with the Internet, and hence more potential for security problems.
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