The Dark Side of Using a Computer
By Ron Savage
My website's URI: https://savage.net.au//index.html.

This article's URI:
https://savage.net.au/misc/The.Dark.Side.of.Using.a.Computer.txt.
This article is quite long. A short version is online at:
https://savage.net.au/A.Simple.Introduction.to.Using.Computers.txt.
And yes, the files on my website are on a case-sensitive file system.

Q 1: Did you know that simply viewing a web page or (HTML-format) email can
automatically download viruses?
A: You didn't know? Now you do. Keep reading.

Q 2: How is such a thing possible?
A: Because web pages often contain references to resources in the form of images
& other files. Sample references from my pages are:
	<script src = '/assets/js/jstree.min.js'></script>
	<link rel='stylesheet' type='text/css' href='/assets/css/local/default.css'>
The latter is a reference to a file - default.css - located in a certain directory
- /assets/css/local/ - whose exact location is specified in relation to the
homepage of my website.
The problem is that malicious website creators can include references to
programs which run automatically as soon as they are downloaded to your computer.
And such programs can in turn download to your computer anything they want.

Q 3: Why does this terminology matter?
A: Because when using a computer you will often be using other types of browsers.
A great example is a File Browser, which displays file names & directory names,
allowing you to select one for your next action.
And: By using a Web Client (Browser) you are browsing the internet, & using the
Browser to select domains (such as savage.net.au) & files within the chosen
domain. Specifically consider the URI I gave above: https://savage.net.au/.

The savage.net.au is a Domain Name, & the trailing / is a special
nickname for the homepage, whose actual name is index.html.
So the full URI is https://savage.net.au/index.html.

Q 4: Well, how do you handle the problem of auto-downloading unwanted stuff?
A: One way is by educating users. I wrote my first computer program in 1971,
which is a hell of a long time ago now. So I have much experience. For you
beginners you need to rely on your Web Client (Browser) to help you.
Web Clients have a feature whereby they can - with your permission - download
& install within themselves programs which are called Extensions.

I use the FireFox (FF) Web Client, with these Extensions:
(a) ClearURLs - Purpose: Remove tracking elements from URLs. These elements
track you as you navigate from website to website. I don't like that.
An example would be an image of 1 pixel (!) which some sneaky people store in
your Web Client (Browser) & look for at a later date.

(b) JShelter - Purpose: Increase the security & privacy level of the user.
This Extension shelters you from various types of nasty activity.

(c) Privacy Badger - Purpose: Automatically learn to block hidden trackers.
Made by leading digital rights nonprofit EFF to stop companies from spying on you.
EFF is the Electronic Frontier Foundation - https://www.eff.org/.

Specifically, see the URI https://www.eff.org/pages/surveillance-self-defense.

(d) PrintFriendly - Purpose: Make web pages printer-friendly, convert to PDFs,
or take screenshots. Remove ads for clean pages ready to print or save as PDFs.

Also, be warned that email can be delivered in HTML format, so that this whole
problem of protection against auto-downloading of nasties applies to email,
as described next.

Q 5: How do I handle email?
A: Firstly, I have 2 email addresses:
(a) A Gmail (Google Mail) address, rongogo@gmail.com, so that sending to this one
means the message sent is routed to my mobile phone, which is an Android (Google) phone.

(b) A normal email address, ron@savage.net.au, so that sending to this one means the
message is routed to my website, & I access the website's email using a Web Client
(Browser) tab wherein I log in to my website & choose to open my emails.
But more than that, when I see a list of incoming emails, I check them one-by-one
with extreme caution.

(c) I roll the mouse pointer over the 'From' field, to see if the dislayed name is
related to the sender's true email address. Any mismatch & I immediately delete that
email. You have to be a bit careful here, since it takes experience to recognize some
of the email addresses as being legitimate when at first glance they my seem suspicious.
Specifically, sometimes the crims use your own email address with a MyGov or similar
well-known displayed name. You can delete those emails with a clear conscious.

(d) Next I carefully examine what my Email Client program has displayed.
By default it displays the email in such a way as to NOT download the sorts of
embedded resources I discussed above. That is, I am automatically protected from
running unwanted programs.

To be more specific, at the top of the email (as displayed by my Email Client) there are
6 lines of information:
1: The Subject of the email in black: (eg) 'First Break VIC | Participants Announced'.
(The following are in blue text)
2: 'From' + the sender's alleged display name. Mouse-over shows the sender's email.
3: The 'To' of the email, which will be my email address.
4: The 'Reply-to' email address.
5: The Date & Time.
6: A line of 3 clickable options:
	(a) 'Summary'.
	(b) 'Headers'.
	(c) 'Plain text'.
In FireFox this last option is vital. It means the Email Client is displaying the
email in 'Plain text' format. If I click that option it displays the acronym HTML, &
the email is re-displayed as HTML, meaning any type of HTML resource can be
automatically downloaded in order to display the email as a web page.
So the protection is that option always defaulting to 'Plain text' for new emails.

Q 6: Are there any drawbacks from doing things your way?
A: Yes, there is 1 specific problem. It's called the 'Latest Version Problem'.
Some people are masochists & choose to burden themselves with the latest version
of every program, which means they choose to burden themselves with the latest
bugs & other problems in the new software. I & many other people do things differently.
I run an Operating System (OS) called Debian which simply never ships the latest
version. Rather, it subjects new versions of all software to much more testing than
do other operating systems, & hence there is always a delay between the release of
a new version of some program & its release as part of Debian. Normally this delay
is to the advantage of us Debian users. Updates are discussed in Q 14.

Q 7: Errrr. You say 'normally an advantage'. Not always?
A: No. Not always. Some organizations, eg banks, don't let you connect directly
to their web site. You first have to go through a vetting procedure called
'Fingerprinting'. This means your Web Client's (Browser's) request to visit the
bank's website is temporarily re-routed thru an organization external to the bank,
& that organization is the one which performs the fingerprinting tests.

These tests consist of the organization sending a series of 1 or more messages
to your browser to interrogate its brand, version, extensions, etc.
Then, only if the organization deems your Web Client's responses to be
acceptable, does it let you pass thru the sofware gate & access the bank's
actual website.

Q 8: Why is that a problem?
A: Because that organization can mandate that it will only allow you to access
the bank's website if you have the latest version of the Web Client installed!
But it is precisely the latest version which people like me running the Debian
Operating System do not have installed. So I cannot use the FireFox Web Client
on my computer to access my bank (NAB).

On the other hand, on my Android mobile phone I run the Chrome browser from
Google, which is the latest version, & the intermediary organization does allow
me to use Chrome. Hence I have to do all my banking on my mobile phone, with
its tiny screen. Sigh.

Q 9: Are there any other problems I should know about?
A: Yes, many. One is the question of whether to buy a desktop or a laptop.
We all know laptops are the default choice for many people, but are they the best
choice? We can answer that by asking: How many times per year do you actually
pick up your laptop & take it somewhere else to do some computing?
The answer, especially for us old folks, is probably never! Right?

Well then, why buy a laptop? There are 2 major reasons, both bad ideas:
(a) Habit. You just think it's normal to buy one, since 'everybody' else does.

(b) Peer-group pressure. You suffer verbal agression if you try to discuss the
alternative, the desktop. Remember: Misery loves company!
The problem with laptops is they are about 3 times the price of deskstops,
which is a way of saying that with the laptop you pay a massive tax in order to
get the convenience of mobility which you never actually utilize.

Looking at it like this might now explain the peer-group pressure from people
who secretly regret paying that mobility tax when they bought their laptop.

Q 10: Anything else?
A: Yes - glad you asked. There is the question of which Operating System (OS)
to install. For most people this is easy. The machines usually come with MS
Windows pre-installed, & it's quite likely MS Windows is the only Operating
System you will ever use (& for which I pity you). So it becomes a question of
familiarity 'v' the issue of dealing with a new & different OS, eg Debian.

Q 11: So what factors do I need to take into account in order to decide?
A: (a) Cost. MS Windows costs money, whereas Debian & similar OSes are free.

(b) Cost. MS Office costs money, whereas LibreOffice, which you would normally use
with Debian etc, is free. And LibreOffice can read & write MS Office files the same
way MS Office can read & write LibreOffice files. This flexibility solves the
problem of sharing files with people who run other OSes. Of course this does
not cover the case of people running macOS on their Apple computers with the
default office package iWork. iWork does not read & write LibreOffice files.

However, there is some good news: LibreOffice is a free-download for macOS,
which again solves the problem of sharing files.

Q 12: Is that all?
A: No, not quite. The other problem is that MS Windows will run fast only for
a few days or weeks, & then will inexorably slow down - a lot. This is how it
is engineered. And it will make the other programs you run, run slower & slower.
And MS windows programs tend to be 10 to 100 times bigger than they need to be,
which just 'accidently' wastes vast amounts of disk space & RAM. And that in
turn makes those programs slower to copy from disk to RAM in order to run them.

All of this is of course engineered to make you angry & frustrated, so you then
start buying what are allegedly upgrades, in order to relieve you mental pain.
This is the essence of Microsoft's immeasurably cynical business model. You pay,
& you pay, & you pay. Good luck with that! Debian of course never slows down
because it is written by ethical people, as is LibreOffice.

Q 13: OK. So is that all?
A: No. Consider rebooting. I virtually never reboot my computer. And I hate
rebooting. Why? Because during the reboot I can't actually use the computer
can I? So what do I do at the end of each day? I put the computer into hibernation,
which in turn means the next day I just have to wake it up - not reboot it.
And the wake up takes 7-8 seconds, much faster than rebooting.

Contrariwise, MS Windows both encourages you & often forces you to reboot,
precisely because rebooting cripples your productivity. As above, this is an
example of Microsoft's immeasurably cynical business model.

Perhaps you can now begin to understand why it is over 45 years since I sullied
my fingertips by using a computer running MS Windows :-)).

Q 14: What about updating software?
A: If updates are available for the OS, I will get a pop-up message, so I know
when to install them. And yes, updates pertaining to the OS often require a
reboot. But this normally happens only 2 or 3 times a year. This degree of
stability is what makes Debian famous. We eschew the 'Latest Version Problem'
(see Q 6 above) in favour of stability.

Q 15: What hardware do I have, exactly?
A: Brand: Lenovo. Model: M70Q Tiny i5-10500T (refurbished). 16 Gb RAM. 16 CPUs
(called 'cores'). 256 Gb RAM chip for a hard disk. Size is 14cm x 14cm x 3cm.

Since it is not a laptop I had to buy all the peripherals separately:
Screen (54cm), Keyboard, DVD drive, Radio mouse, USB 2-port hub. The latter plugs
into the computer & hence occupies a USB port but gives me 2 ports. A 4-port hub
is also possible. I already had an old Brother HL-2140 printer.
Cost: about $800. Cheap considering you can pay $3,900 for a fancy laptop.
But a more realistic comparison would be with a Lenovo laptop of say $2,400.

That's why I said above that a laptop is about 3 times the cost of a desktop.

Q 16: How do I backup my work?
A: I use Flash drives, which many people call USB sticks. We call them Flash
drives becaue thay are made of Flash RAM, meaning a flash (burst) of electricity
is required to write to them. The name USB stick comes from their physical form
of being a stick of RAM with a USB connector on the end. All this means we
don't back up to CDs or DVDs anymore, because once data is written to a DVD it
is not possible to delete it and re-use that space. But with Flash drives they
are guaranteed to be re-writable 10,000 times, so space used can be reclamined
by simply deleting obsolete files. And being super-cautious I actually backup
everything twice, to 2 separate Flash drives.

And of course when you abstain from buying a laptop you can shout yourself to
a large screen. After all, there is no point in paying for 2 screens, is there?

Do you see now why this article is called 'The Dark Side of Using a Computer'?

Lastly, FYI (For Your Information):
(a): {} are called braces, aka curly braces or curlies.
(b): [] are called brackets, aka square brackets.
(c): () are called parentheses, aka brackets.
(d): What's the best way to keep notes on a computer: Use a TiddlyWiki.
They are free from http://tiddlywiki.com. The download is called empty.html.
A TiddlyWiki is a web page with a built-in editor, and in the case of
TiddlyWiki, the editor is extremely clever, offering a wide array of
features. Tutorials on how to use TiddlyWikis are also on that website.
Don't use empty.html for info. Make a copy of it for each project.
I have a directory called Documents/wikis/ in which I have 9 copies of
empty.html, each one named according to the project it belongs to.

Further, I have another directory of 7 TiddlyWikis, which are treated
specially because I upload new versions occasionally to my website.

Remember this URI from the start of the article: https://savage.net.au/?
The 'Wiki Haven' on my homepage lists those 7 for downloading by you
or anyone else.