Have you ever visited a website and moments later a window opens up on your computer telling you that your computer is infected with hundreds of viruses and thousands of other types of malware? Have you been on the internet and all of a sudden your computer slows to a crawl and you have no idea why? Have you ever clicked a link in an email that a friend has sent and have been taken to a website that doesn’t look right, and turns out it’s an infected website? Have your kids been going places on the internet they shouldn’t be? Have you gotten on the internet and noticed that your starting page or your search engine has changed?
There is a way to protect you, your computer and your family members from accessing those websites by changing a setting on your computer.
How does it work?
Each time your computer visits a Web site, it converts the website address that you entered to a number which represents the IP address of the site (computers only connect to IP addresses, not human-friendly names). Imagine that you want to go to a restaurant so you enter the name of the restaurant into your GPS and what you get back is the street address of the restaurant. That’s what happens when you enter a website name into your browser. Now, your GPS won’t tell you that the address is in a bad part of town, it’ll just give you the address and directions to get there. Imagine now that your GPS can be set so that it no longer just gives you the address, but it also tells you that the restaurant has been restricted because people have gotten sick while eating there or there have been some burglaries there recently or hookers have been known to hang out around there so you have a way of knowing that and can avoid going there.
By making a simple change to your computer’s network setting, you can have that kind of protection when on the Internet. When entering a website in your browser, your browser performs a quick check on each site to make sure that the requested Web site is safe. If the requested Web site is unsafe, you will see a warning that includes information on why the site is rated as dangerous. There are a couple of different levels of protection, so you can set your computer to block sites hosting malware, phishing sites, or scam sites. You can also set your computer to block not only unsafe sites but those that contain sexually explicit material.
You can make the choice and I’d highly recommend you take the steps to do it. If you’re interested in this, comment on this and I’ll help you make the changes to your computer or if you’d like to make the change yourself, let me know what version of Windows or if you’re using a Mac, let me know that and I’ll send you the instructions.
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