Dangers In The World Of Pop-Ups
April 10, 2009 by Sam Garnebo
Filed under Online Colleges
Most people experience pop-ups as they are visiting their favorite sites on the web or doing a simple searches. After they’ve been online for a little while and visiting from site to site they may run into a little add that “pops” onto their screen. As the surfer thinks nothing of it, he closes it and finds that in a few minutes another will replace it.
You close that window and here come even more pop-ups, appearing so rapidly it seems as if they are being disbursed out of a machine gun. Completely fed up, you shut down the browser and conclude that this just isn?t your day.
If you surf the web then you know just how irritating pop-ups can be. Naturally, they impose their unwanted material most of the time when your in the middle of doing something important to yourself. Sometimes these unbashful pop-ups will continue to stream onto your computer even if you try to hide offline, when this happens you are invovled in the worst thing that can happen. As if their actual existance is not enough of an annoyance, they also have the capability of carrying along with them thing that can do serious dammage to your personal computer.
More than Meets the Eye
Legal companies use pop-ups as another source of advertisement, however, criminals also use them in order to try and scam people out of their hard earned money, or even give viruses to any unprotected computer.
Some pop-ups act as portals for harmful programs, such as viruses, Trojans and spyware. Once installed, spyware has the ability to monitor your computing activities and collect all types of data. It may log all the websites you visit and keep records of your login details, contact information and possibly your credit card numbers.
The more advanced spyware software can even retrieve your information as you type it, this can and does result in theft of your identity as well as your assets. One little pop-up has numerous capabilities and dangers which can lead to vast amount of personal damage to a person. Do you really want to take a chance with them?
No more pop-ups
Many users today are enjoying pop-up free surfing thanks to all the internet filters and blocking programs on the market. Some programs give you the ability to customize blocking habits with configurations that allow the useful pop-ups to be displayed, while putting a cap on those potentially hazardous annoyances. Some of the more advanced software not only blocks pop-ups, but also filters out websites suspected of distributing malicious content, as well as those boasting pornographic material.
Pop-ups will continue to remain part of the internet because they are useful to many companies around the world. Just because you cannot control the entire web doesn’t mean you are able to defend your own home by getting the internet filter that is right for you.
Does Blogging have an evil side?
March 29, 2009 by Sam Garnebo
Filed under Online Colleges
Blogs have become incredibly popular over the years, and it seems thought everyone from teenagers to business owners are blogging. A blog is a web-based publishing system that basically acts as an online journal. Anyone can sign up for a free blog account and post content ranging from text and images to music and videos.
To someone who wants to market their product, blogs are great avenues to utilize, if you just want the world to know whatever you feel like expressing to them, go right ahead. However, the possibilities do not end there, they also open the door for anyone who wants to promote porn, or much worse, sexually solicit children.
Blogs used for porn
Different sites offer many different topics for their blogs. People will use their blog for passing aroung the latest juicy celebrity gossip, or as a means to further those interested in the knowledge of technology, but it also Allows numerous people the ability to ditsribute pornography.
In some respects blogging could be called nothing more than simply a website, which like other websites, it has the capability of containing pornography just the same as a porn site. The world wide web has made it so anyone can come across a porn containing blog, even children.
Even some of the most popular blogging platforms, such as WordPress, Blogger and LiveJournal, are commonly used to advertise porn. As a member of such a community, all a child has to do is type a few explicit keywords into the built-in search engine and then roam through an abundance of obscene content. Sadly, most of these sites leave pornographic content wide open for all to view, with no security mechanisms in place to protect children.
Online Predators are Blogging
As with most anything in the world there is a negative to all positives. As if porn entering the minds of children through these porn blogs wasn’t quite bad enough, there is yet a more serious danger yet, pedophiles.
Children that have blogs are targets of these predators who will post notes on the sight and appear as a friend. With their fake profile a child can be deceived into thinking an adult pedophile is the child’s age in order to blend right in.
What makes this scenario even more potentially dangerous is the fact that so many children openly publish photos and other identifying details on their blog page. Because most of these platforms offer a free service, they are typically un-moderated, leaving children with no way to differentiate genuine readers from online predators.
Children need to be protected.
It is vital to make sure your children understand all the dangers that come along with blogging. They should realize that is never acceptable to post personal information, as anyone can view it and try to contact them.
If you do allow your child to participate in a blog, be sure to frequently monitor their activities and keep that participation to a minimum.
For those wise parents who wish not to take any chances, it is good advice for you to get yourself a good internet filtering software. This tool will allow you to control where your child surfs as well as where he blogs, allowing you to block out porn as well as the predator who wants YOUR child.






