Windows XP Power Hound

Online Safety You May Not Have Considered

Installing a firewall and controlling your cookies are smart ways to protect yourself when you're online, but they're not the only security measures you should consider. This section gives you several additional strategies for safeguarding your computer and your personal information as you surf the Web.

Controlling Your Internet Security Levels

In the real world, it's usually obvious which are the seedier, more dangerous parts of town. But that isn't always true on the Web. An attractive, respectable-looking home page may actually be disguising a site intent on harm.

To help protect you from potential menaces, Internet Explorer categorizes Web sites and other places you may visit online (for example, an intranet) and places them into a handful of different security zones, each of which applies different levels of protection to your computer. The four security zone levels are as follows:

• Internet (medium security)

• Local Intranet (medium-low security)

• Trusted Sites (low security)

• Restricted Sites (high security)

Table 6-3 explains which security settings are applied for each zone. Any sites on your company's network or intranet are automatically added to the Local Intranet zone. All other Web sites are automatically added to the Internet zone. You can move sites from the Internet zone to the Trusted Sites or Restricted Sites zones manually. For example, if you know from experience that you can unequivocally trust http://www.catster.com, go ahead ...