Prevention and Maintenance

When you connect to the internet using a public wireless connection (such as at a coffeeshop or airport), there are some basic security precautions you should take. If doesn’t matter whether the connection is free or paid-for — the fact that it’s publicly accessible is what makes it risky, because it’s very easy to eavesdrop on internet traffic on a public wireless network. That means anything that you type, including passwords or other sensitive data, is potentially available to anyone who wants it.

Introduction

Most people keep stuff they care about on their computers — emails, addresses, photos, music, letters, and so forth. This stuff (technically known as, yes, “data”) is stored in files on the computer's hard disk. In order to understand why it is so important to backup, consider the following.