Trust Your Web

[At school…]

"Class, I have an exciting announcement," said Hackney. We now have internet access! This ties in perfectly with today's lesson. With the internet, many computers are connected to one place and you can see what are called web sites, which is where people post pretty much whatever they want or it can be a site where on the same site, people can upload their own content, like YourTube, which is a site for uploading videos but not everything up on that site is good and the site will warn you if you click the link. I won't go into complete detail of this as it's not appropriate for your age group. I should warn you that with the internet, there are also bad web sites, either because they show very bad images like fighting or because they are trying to trick you into doing something.

"What do these sites look like, Ms Hackney?" asked Bright Eyes

"Since we just got internet, I don't really know, Bright Eyes but I'll try to look that up as best I can to see if I can answer that. *the clock chimes* That's it for today, class, see you all tomorrow.

"Wow, we now have internet," said Melody.

"This is really truly great news," said Sweetheart. I hope our parents can afford to get us computers. *they walk home* [At Melody's house…]

"Melody, dear, I have a surprise for you," said her mother.

"What is it, mom?" asked Melody.

"A new computer," said her mother.

"It's awesome, mom, " said Melody. How's it work?

"According to the instructions, the power button, used to turn the computer on, is right here," said her mother. The computer comes doesn't automatically come with the internet but I have installed it on this computer so you're ready to go now. The instructions even go over details about the internet in case you're new.

"To visit a site, visit and type what you want to search for using the keys for the keyboard, located in front of you," read Melody. Well this doesn't look too hard. Let's see here I have to type this address in this box called Address. *she types the address* I'm going to search for my favorite band the Cleveland Bays. *she types the phrase into Goozle's search engine* They have their own website? Way cool but how do I visit it? *she picks up the instructions again and reads* To visit a site, click with your left mouse button when your mouse pointer is on the title of the link. Sounds easy enough. *she clicks the link and a pop-up appears* What's that, mom?

"Attention, your computer has dangerous viruses, spyware, adware and other malware," read her mother. Download our latest antivirus software to clean your computer of these infections. What? That can't be right, you just got your new computer and all you visited was that site and Goozle.

"What do we do, mom?" asked Melody.

"Let's close it and go back," said her mother. *Melody picks up the instructions*

"Closing a window is easy, click the red x in the upper right corner of the window with your left mouse button," read Melody. *she closes the window and the website page changes* Mom, what's going on?

"It changed the page and appears to be now scanning your computer," said her mother. It found 22 infections but that's not right.

"We'd better do what it says and download their antivirus," said Melody. *she clicks the link to download and Norman Antivirus pops up*

"Uh oh," said her mother. I forgot to mention that this computer has Norman Antivirus on it, which will defend your computer against stuff like this. It appears it's found an infection called "fakeAV" but I don't quite know what that means. Norman is asking if we want to clean the file. Yes we do. *Melody clicks "Yes" on Norman's pop-up and Norman cleans the file*

"Whew, that was close," said Melody. I'd better be more careful when using the internet. [The next day…]

"Good morning, class," said Hackney. I'm sure you all had a pretty good day using the internet? I think I found the answer to your question, Bright Eyes as I think we all faced it yesterday. It was trying to make us think we were infected, like when we are infected when we're sick, on our computers when they were brand new. It's called a Bad Antivirus and what antivirus is, as I'm sure you were told by your parents, is your computer's defense against the bad things on the internet. When using the internet, we need to watch out for things like that because if we don't our internet fun can turn into no fun at all really fast. Luckily we haven't reached a point where these Bad Antivirus things can take money away from you by telling you to enter personal information, which is not what you want to do at all. I know this is a pretty scary first look at the internet but if we can be more careful, we can lower the chances of us having a bad time. I think we've learned a valuable lesson today so I'll let class go a bit early today. *the class cheers and runs out the door*