Spyware

Spyware is a type of malware that is installed on computers and collects little bits of information at a time about users without their knowledge. The presence of spyware is typically hidden from the user, and can be difficult to detect. Typically, spyware is secretly installed on the user's personal computer. Sometimes, however, spywares such as keyloggers are installed by the owner of a shared, corporate, or public computer on purpose in order to secretly monitor other users.

While the term spyware suggests that software that secretly monitors the user's computing, the functions of spyware extend well beyond simple monitoring. Spyware programs can collect various types of personal information, such as Internet surfing habits and sites that have been visited, but can also interfere with user control of the computer in other ways, such as installing additional software and redirecting Web browser activity. Spyware is known to change computer settings, resulting in slow connection speeds, different home pages, and or loss of Internet or functionality of other programs. In an attempt to increase the understanding of spyware, a more formal classification of its included software types is captured under the term privacy-invasive software.

E-Learning

The term e-learning is ambiguous to those outside the e-learning industry, and even within its diverse disciplines it has different meanings to different people. For instance, in companies it often refers to the strategies that use the company network to deliver training courses to employees and lately in most Universities, e-learning is used to define a specific mode to attend a course or program of study where the students rarely or never meet face-to-face, nor access on-campus educational facilities, because they study online.

Benefit of E-Learning

Improved performance

Increased access

Convenience and flexibility to learners

To develop the skills and competencies needed in 21^st century in particular to ensure that learners have the digital literacy skills required in their discipline, profession or career

Virtual Learning Environment

A virtual learning environment (VLE) is a software system designed to support teaching and learning in an educational setting, as distinct from a Managed Learning Environment, (MLE) where the focus is on management. A VLE will normally work over the Internet and provide a collection of tools such as those for assessment (particularly of types that can be marked automatically, such as multiple choice), communication, uploading of content, return of students' work, peer assessment, administration of student groups, collecting and organizing student grades, questionnaires, tracking tools, etc. New features in these systems include wikis, blogs, RSS and 3D virtual learning spaces.

While originally created for distance education, VLEs are now most often used to supplement traditional face to face classroom activities, commonly known as Blended Learning. These systems usually run on servers, to serve the course to students Multimedia and or web pages.

A VLE is a computer program that facilitates computerized learning or e-learning. Such e-learning systems are sometimes also called Learning Management System (LMS), Content Management System (CMS), Learning Content Management System (LCMS), Managed Learning Environment (MLE), Learning Support System (LSS), Online Learning Centre (OLC),OpenCourseWare (OCW), or Learning Platform (LP); it is education via computer-mediated communication (CMC) or Online Education.

Search Engine

Search engines are specialized programs that assist you in locating information on the Web and the Internet.

A search engine is a program that finds Web sites, web pages, images, videos, news maps, and other information related to a specific topic

For example, Yahoo’s search engine like most others, provides two different search approaches keyword search and directory search

Keyword search

In a keyword search, you enter a keyword or phrase reflecting the information you want. The search engine compares your entry again its database and returns a list of hits, or sites that contain the keywords. Each hit includes a hyperlink to the referenced Web page (or other resource) along with a brief discussion of the information contained at that location. Many searches result in a large number of hits. For example, if you were to enter the keyword travel, you would get thousands of hits. Search engines order the hits according to those sites that most likely contain the information requested and present the list to you in that order, usually in groups of 10.

Directory search

Most search engines also provide a directory or list of categories or topics such as Autos, Finance and Games. In a directory search, you select a category or topic that fits the information that you want.

Example of search engine

Computer Virus

A computer virus is a computer program that can copy itself and infect a computer. The term "virus" is also commonly but erroneously used to refer to other types of malware, adware, and spyware programs that do not have the reproductive ability. A true virus can only spread from one computer to another (in some form of executable code) when its host is taken to the target computer; for instance because a user sent it over a network or the Internet, or carried it on a removable medium such as a floppy disk, CD, DVD, or USB drive. Viruses can increase their chances of spreading to other computers by infecting files on a network file system or a file system that is accessed by another computer.

How do I know if a virus has infected my computer?

Your computer runs slower than normal

Your computer stops responding or locks up often

Your computer crashes and restarts every few minutes

Your computer restarts on its own and then fails to run normally

Applications on your computer do not work correctly

Example of a Computer Virus - The "I Love You" Virus

This is not the reason that the "I Love You" virus came into being. The author of this particular virus was a computer student in a college in the Philippines and wrote the virus as an experiment, not intending it to ever be used. The virus was obtained by someone close to her and released into the wild and had infected millions of computers worldwide in a few hours! This particular virus attacked media files like JPGs and MP3s and for each one on a PC, it became a part of the virus, spreading it across the world like an ill-wind.

The "I Love You" menace clogged up Web servers, manipulated personal files and caused IT System Managers to shut e-mail systems off the network. (The author was one of these IT Managers - we saw the email proliferating and as fast as we shut subsystems down, the faster the menace came flooding inwards. In the end, we had to completely shut the network off from the outside world.

How It Appears
Arriving in your e-mail with a subject line: "I Love You" and including an attachment entitled "Love-Letter-For-You.txt.vbs," this is supposed to be a real lure(!) but you (now) know better! Opening the attachment obviously infects the computer. But with a modern virus-checker like [Alwil Avast! Home Edition] home users can protect themselves from ever getting near to a menace like this, since the virus checker will catch it before it can ever be opened.

On with the story (since this is just a story really!): once the computer has been infected the virus does its work like this: first it scans the memory for passwords, and these would be sent back to the virus creator's web site which will never happen because it has long since been shut down. Then the infection replicates itself to all addresses found in any Outlook address book on the machine. Last of all, it corrupts files with extensions ending with .vbs, .vbe, .js, .css, .wsh, .sct, .hta, .jpg, .jpeg, .mp2, .mp3 by overwriting them with a copy of itself.

This is an old virus, (1995 or so) but demonstrates what viruses do to a computer and the danger of the "classic" self-replicating behavior which first started in the mid 90s.