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Glossary
of Security and Privacy Terms
- This glossary does not attempt to include all terms related to the Web or Internet, but is intended to supplement the terminology used in this document. For a more general Internet glossary, try the Agtel Telecommunications Glossary, or the Glossary of Internet Terms.
-
- anonymous remailers
- Remailers are programs accessible on the Internet that route email and Usenet postings anonymously (i.e., the recipient cannot determine who sent the email or posted the article).
- (See also: email and remailers)
- chat groups, chat rooms
- Chat groups are virtual meeting places where you can
converse via keyboard with other people from all over the
world. Unlike newsgroups or email, chat is "live."
Internet Relay Chat is one form of chat service, but chat
rooms also exist on subscriber services like America
Online and CompuServe.
- (See also Internet Relay Chat)
- cracking
- A malicious form of hacking.
- Electronic mail. Messages, usually text, sent from one person to another through a computer. Email can be sent automatically to a large number of addresses (mailing list). (Yup, the word is now common enough that the hyphenated "e-mail" is no longer the correct spelling.)
- email address
- An email address is made up of two parts: name@domain
- The part before the @ sign is your login ID.
- Everything after the @ defines the computer where your account resides, otherwise known as the domain.
- encryption software
- Encryption is a method of scrambling a message so that it can only be read by a person who has key to unscramble it. Encryption software exists for email as well as World Wide Web browsing.
- (see also PGP, SSL)
- FAQ
- Frequently Asked Questions. Documents that list answers to the most common questions on a particular subject. There are thousands of FAQs on subjects as different as personal finances and ostrich breeding . FAQs are generally written by people tired of answering the same question over and over.
- (See also: All the FAQs )
- finger
- An Internet software program used to locate people on other Internet sites. Finger can also be used to access non-personal information. The most common use is to determine if a person has an account at a particular Internet site. To protect their users, many sites do not allow incoming Finger requests.
- flame
- A nasty email or newsgroup post that may invite an even nastier response.
- hacker
- A hacker is a person who is a computer guru, and who refrains from computer mischief. A computer guru who uses his or her knowledge of computers for mischief (or outright sabotage) is considered a cracker. Hackers usually command respect, crackers do not.
- header
- The area in an email message that contains information about who that message came from, when it was sent, etc.
- (See also: email)
- history file
- Browsers like Netscape and Internet Explorer keep a record of every site you browse while on the web. This information is stored in the history file. Netscape names these files "Global History" on Macs, and "Netscape.hst" on PCs.
- (See also: NSClean information )
- IRC, Internet Relay Chat
- A huge multi-user live chat area. There are a number major IRC servers around the world inked to each other. Anyone can create a "channel" and anything typed in a given channel is seen by all others on that channel. Private channels can (and are) created for multi-person "conference calls".
- (see also chat group, IRC Undernet FAQs, IRC FAQs)
- Java applet
- A short piece of code written in Java, an object-oriented programming language designed for the WWW. Applets can spice up a Web page if they are used to display animations or form results. Applets can also be written to perform "hostile" functions, such as rewriting your hard drive or stealing your login ID and password.
- (See also: Hostile Applets, Java FAQ )
- Listserv
- The most widespread of mail lists, and sometimes used to refer to all mail lists. Listservs started on BITNET and are now common on the Internet.
- (See also: email, mail list)
- login ID, or login name
- The account name used to access a computer system. Not secret (like a password.)
- (See also: password)
- MagicCookie
- This is a file written to your hard drive when you use Netscape. The cookie file keeps track of info such as when you visit a Web site, where you're coming from, what kind of computer you have, and other details about your browsing habits.
- (See also: history file, Web browsing tools)
- mail list, mailing list
- A (usually automated) system that allows an email to be sent to one address, then that message is copied and sent to all of the other subscribers to that particular mail list. Mail lists allow those with different kinds of email access to participate in discussions together.
- (See also: email, Listserv, newsgroup)
- network
- When two or more computers are connected and sharing resources. Connect two or more networks together and you have an Internet. Connect computer networks all over the world and you have the Internet.
- newsgroup
- The name of discussion groups on Usenet. Newsgroups are like bulletin boards, whose messages can be read from any server in the world which subscribes to Usenet news.
- (See also: mail list,
Usenet)
- packet switching
- The technique used to move data around on the Internet. In packet switching, all the data coming from a computer is broken up into chunks, each chunk has the address of where it came from and where it is going. This allows chunks of data from many different sources to share the same transmission lines, and be sorted and directed to different routes by special machines along the way. This allows many people to use the same lines at the same time.
- (See also: packet sniffing)
- packet sniffing, snooping
- Because packet switching is used to move data between computers on the Internet, computers can receive information that was intended for other machines. Capturing or intercepting information going over the network is called sniffing.
- Sniffing email is relatively easy to perform and difficult to detect. Although it can be directed toward an individual machine or user, most sniffing is random and the chance of your email or other data being "snooped" is relatively small.
- (see packet switching, Sniffer FAQ )
- password
- A (usually secret) code used to gain access to a
locked system. Good passwords contain letters and
non-letters and are not simple combinations such as:
Jan3. A good password is a series of characters
not found in a dictionary. A good password might be:
twbhtg3-5. It could be remembered as This
Would Be Hard To Guess
from 3 to 5.
(See also: login) - PGP, Pretty Good Privacy
- Pretty Good Privacy. A way of
encrypting information sent through the Internet to
secure privacy. Definitely better than no security at
all, but a competent computer hacker or cracker could get
through PGP.
(See also: encryption, hacker, cracker, encryption links) - phone phreaking
- Phone phreaking is the phrase used for hacking or cracking a telephone network. Relevant to Internet security and privacy because some phreaking techniques can be used to intercept or "sniff" computer data.
- (See also: hacker, packet sniffing)
- post
- To send a message to a newsgroup or a mailing list.
- (See also: mailing list, newsgroup)
- remailers
- see anonymous remailers
- signature file, sig file
- A space that automatically includes several lines of text on an email or newsgroup post. These are easily created by the user and can include email address, snail mail address and phone numbers. Many times signatures will include graphics created with text characters.
- (See also: email, newsgroup, snail mail, spam )
- snail mail
- Using the postal service to send information. It could take a few seconds to send an email across the globe. The same message sent through snail mail could take a week or longer.
- (See also: email)
- spam
- Spamming is posting an email message (often an advertisement) to a large group of people, or to several newsgroups or listservs. Don't spam. It wastes computer resources and makes people angry. Spamming is grounds for your Internet provider to take away your email account, and will at least draw "flames" from recipients of your spam. (The name originates from a Monty Python spam skit.)
- (See also: email, flame, Listserv, newsgroups)
- spoofed mail
- Email and newsgroup posts can be forged, or spoofed, when a user sends a message pretending to be someone else. Usually done as a joke, but spoofed mail can be destructive.
- (See also: phoney-mail.txt , email and remailers)
- SSL
- Secure Sockets Layer protocol used by Netscape to deliver server authentication, data encryption, and message integrity. SSL is an attempt to ensure privacy on the WWW by transmitting data over the Internet in encrypted form.
- (See also: On Security - Netscape FAQ)
- Usenet
- A world-wide network of discussion groups, with
comments exchanged among hundreds of thousands of
computers. Probably only half of Usenet groups are on the
Internet, Usenet is completely decentralized, with over
10,000 discussion areas, called newsgroups .
(See also: newsgroup) - VeriSign ID
- An attempt to authenticate and verify identity in Internet communications.
- (See also: Digital ID from VeriSign)
-
- Background on this project.
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- © copyright 1996, Jan G. Hogle