Privacy and Security eMagazine - January 2015

email, and games; may be a desktop computer, laptop, table, or a handheld PC. The term PC has been traditionally used to describe an “IBM-compatible” personal computer, in contrast to an Apple Macintosh computer.

Phishing—sending emails that attempt to fraudulently acquire personal information, such as usernames, passwords, social security numbers, and credit card numbers, by masquerading as a trustworthy entity, such as a popular social website, financial site, or online payment processor; often directs users to enter details at a fake website whose look and feel are almost identical to the legitimate one.

Plug-ins—sometimes called add-ons, are software modules that add functionality to an application; commonly used in web browsers to play video, scan for viruses, and display new file types; well-known plug-in examples include Adobe Flash Player, QuickTime, and Microsoft Silverlight.

Podcast—an audio digital file that is received from the Internet and then downloaded and synced to a portable media player or computer; files are received by subscribing to a podcast feed (sometimes called an RSS feed); the term combines “broadcast” and “pod” from the success of the iPod, although podcasts can be listened to on any portable media player.

Pop-ups—or pop-up ads, are a form of online advertising on the World Wide Web intended to attract web traffic or capture email addresses; created by advertisers, pop-ups generally appear unexpectedly in a small web browser window when a user is linking to a new Web site.

Pop-up blockers—a web browser feature, software, or application that allows users to limit or block pop-up ads; users may often set the preferred level of blocking, from total blocking to minimal blocking.

RSS—Really Simple Syndication is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works, such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video— in a standardized format; users subscribe to RSS feeds, which automatically send favorite content to users who have signed up for the feeds.

Search engine—program that searches documents for specified keywords and returns a list of the documents where the keywords were found; often used to describe systems, including Google, Bing, and Yahoo! Search that enable users to search for documents on the World Wide Web. Security software—a generic term referring to any computer program that secures a computer system or computer network; the two main types of security software are virus protection software and software that removes adware and spyware (both require regular updating to remain effective).

Server—a computer program or physical computer that services other computers over a local network or the Internet; network servers typically are configured with additional processing, memory, and storage capacity; specific to the Web, a Web server is a computer program (housed in a computer) that serves requested HTML