Always Use Protection: A Teen's Guide to Safe Computing

Consider this true scenario: Two teenagers are both hit by some very nasty, damaging computer viruses. One was a virus that took down his Windows desktop at random times. The other was a trojan, with a hacker at the other end trying to blackmail him for game CD keys. Neither of the teens had up to date anti-virus software. Only one had a firewall.

Fact: Teenagers often suffer numerous other problems - from corrupt systems that need to be restored, to having E-mail accounts stolen, to being impersonated on instant message chats.

Security experts know that home users are the most vulnerable to viruses. In fact, many home users are teenagers. They often have the best computer (for games), and spend the most time on the Web. And while the news media and parents have done a decent job of warning teenagers of the risks of strangers in public chat rooms, they’ve done virtually nothing to teach teens other aspects of computer security.

Always Use Protection: A Teen’s Guide to Safe Computing contains the most important things every teen needs to know about computer security. Not just the usual information about protecting teens online, but the equally important information on protecting computers from viruses and preventing identity theft (which teens surprisingly suffer from as well).

Daniel Appleman is the president of Desaware Inc., a developer of add-on products and components for Microsoft Visual Studio, including SpyWorks, StateCoder, and the NT Service Toolkit for .NET languages and VB6. He is a cofounder of Apress, a publishing company specializing in high-quality professional level books for computer programmers and IT professionals. He is the author of numerous books, including Moving to VB .NET: Strategies, Concepts and Code, How Computer Programming Works, and Dan Appleman's Visual Basic Programmer's Guide to the Win32 API, and he is the author of a series of eBooks on .NET-related topics.