With the ever increasing threat of viruses, spyware, malware, and spam, I have put together this document to help outline safe Internet practices, which should reduce the chance of workstations at your office becoming infected.

The first thing that needs to be addressed is the websites being visited on office computers. Sites that allow you to play online games or download programs, such as weather bug, should be avoided. These sites often install spyware and malware that allows the provider of the free game/program to track your Internet surfing habits. They use this information to create pop-ups and in web page advertising with a focus on things you have recently searched the web for.

Often times they will also sell the registration information used when you downloaded these applications to other companies, which will increase the amount of spam being sent via email. If something does have to be downloaded and it requires an email address it's a good idea to use another email other than your work email. This also applies to any site that requires an email address that is not work related.

I would recommend that all users create a free email account on Yahoo or Gmail and use this email address when making online purchases or downloading approved content from the web. By doing this the marketers will send the spam to the Yahoo address instead of your work account. When the Yahoo email address becomes unmanageable due to the amount of spam being sent to it, the user can then create a new email address to be used and abandon the previous email address.

Sites like myspace and facebook should also be avoided. Many of the individuals with profiles on these sites use music tracks, video clips, and other types of scripts to make his or her page unique. The danger of these sites is if one of these “enhancements” are infected with a virus. When the visitor clicks the link to see the video or listen to the music the virus will be installed on his or her computer.

Most people are familiar with the forwarded joke emails, inspirational emails, or emails claiming that some major company will donate “X” amount of dollars to some charity every time the message is forwarded. These are often times used by “spammers” as a means of gathering massive amounts of legitimate email addresses for future spamming.

Finally, the best advice I can give is that the computers at your office are for work related functions and should be used for only work related activities. This is the best way to guarantee that your office computers will continue to run properly, which will avoid as many problems as possible.