Browsing for a Browser 1

 Browsing for a Browser

Most ISPs will allow you to check your e-mail from their Web sites, but commonly, you’ll be using Microsoft’s Outlook Express to check your mail on

your home computer.

Yahoo! and Hotmail are two of the most popular e-mail providers. Both are

free and secure, and signing up is a snap. I like them both because they have

a Mail Alert feature, which allows you to instruct Yahoo! or MSN Mobile to

contact you through your pager (or Web-enabled cell phone) when you have

new e-mail. You can join Yahoo! e-mail at www.yahoo.com. You can join

Hotmail by going to www.hotmail.com.

Some commonsense rules can help you protect your account:

 Select a password that’s difficult to guess.✦

 Use letter-and-number

combinations or nonsensical words that nobody else knows. Don’t

use common names or words relating to you (such as the name of

your street).

 Keep passwords secret. ✦

If someone asks for your password online, you

can bet it’s a scam. Never give out your password.

 ✦dont’t open an e-mail with an attachment from an unknown person

The attachment another file attached to your email message could

contain a virus.

 Don’t respond to spam email✦

 Spam is online slange for harasing offensive or useless but

widely distributed messages

or advertisements.

 If you ignore such junk, the sender will probably just give up and go away.

Browsing for a Browser

When you get a computrr, you get an Internet browser for free. A browser is

the software program that let you'r computer talk to the internet. It’s like

having your own private cyberchauffeur. Type the address (also known as

the URL, for Uniform Resource Locator) of the Web site you want to visit, and

boom, you’re there. For example, to get to eBay’s home page, type www.

ebay.com and press Enter. It’s sort of a low-tech version of Beam me up,

Scotty and almost as fast.

The two most popular browser are Netscape Navigatore and Microsoft

Internet Explorer. (They are what Coca-Cola and Pepsi are to the cola wars.)

Both programs are powerful and user-friendly. Figures 1-3 and 1-4 show you

these browsers. (Sit, browser! Now shake! Good browser!)