4 Online safety

[Timings. This is the fourth section of this unit. It should take you around two hours to complete. If you don’t have time to work through it all at once, there are break points where you can stop and return later.] The internet provides many ways for people to get in touch with each other, but this ease of contact can have downsides for the unwary. It can expose internet users to the dangers of malicious software, to unsolicited and nuisance emails, and to a variety of hoaxes. In this section I’ll describe some of these problems and suggest how you can protect yourself from them.