The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

TL11.1_v5 The Teaching Librarian Volume 11, no. 1 29 on… always. Walk away and it goes to sleep. Come back and it's instantly ready. Teens will leave it connected to their MSN or Chat all evening to catch any friends who pop up. But without a firewall to stop unauthorized traffic, your home computer shows up as another networked server to anyone out there who has the appropriate network scanning soft- ware (especially if you're a cable broadband subscriber). If the computer is just running unattended, you may not even know someone else is logging onto your hard drive. Even sit- ting right there you may just wonder at the slightly slower than normal response you're getting. As an unauthorized user I may simply be nosey and read through your hard drive. If I'm more malicious I can help myself to copies of anything I want. It is also surprisingly easy to use your e-mail address book as a delivery system for a virus, or use your e-mail identity to bounce denial-of-service attacks at your expense. BE A TEAM PLAYER So where am I heading with all of this? Am I trying to scare you into unplugging your com- puter and never turning it on again? No. I just want you to do your bit. I want you to be a team player. Help fight the easy access hack- ers who get thrills from those who fail to keep the operating system and antivirus utility cur- rent. Run a personal firewall if you have a broadband connection at home, and power down if you're not using the system. Scan files faithfully and keep your passwords secure. Follow your IT department's protocols for laptops that move between home and office networks. Be a part of the solution, not a part of the problem. Don't be the weakest link. z WHERE TO FIND MORE INFORMATION Security updates for Microsoft® Windows® http://www.microsoft.com/security/ Microsoft® Windows® Operating Systems Update http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/ Mac OS X® Software Updates http://www.apple.com/macosx/ upgrade/softwareupdates.html McAfee Security - Virex® (Macs) http://www.mac.com/ 1/iTour/tour_antivirus .html McAfee Security - VirusScan® (PCs) http://us.mcafee.com/ default.asp Norton's AntiVirus® and Personal Firewall® http://www.symantec .com/ @ you r library ™ TECHNOLOGY