John R. Levine Margaret Levine Young Learn to: • Get connected to the Internet and share your connection with your other computers • Get social with Facebook® and Twitter® • Manage e-mail, connect with friends, and discover new Web sites • Deal with spam, spyware, and other online pitfalls The Internet 12th Edition Making Everything Easier!™ Open the book and find: • Steps for choosing the best Internet service provider • What a router is and when you need one • Tips for Web browsing with Internet Explorer and Firefox • Advice on reducing junk e-mail • Help with banking, shopping and paying bills online safely • Places to share your digital photos • How to find old friends on Facebook and other social sites • Where the cool online music and videos hang out John Levine is a recognized technology expert and pundit who works as a consumer advocate in the battle against online fraud and e-mail spam. Margaret Levine Young is a software engineer and long-time tech author who has written about technology from the Internet to Windows to Access. $24.99 US / $29.99 CN / £17.99 UK ISBN 978-0-470-56095-2 Technology/Internet Go to Dummies.com® for videos, step-by-step examples, how-to articles, or to shop! Welcome aboard! This book is your ticket to the wide, wonderful Internet Today, the Internet is as much a part of everyday life as television — in fact, you can even watch TV on it. This book helps you get connected, shows you how to protect your family from online troublemakers, and introduces you to all the great stuff out there — music and video, online shopping, e-mail, social sites like Facebook and LinkedIn®, games, and much more! • Don’t get caught — learn what phishing, spyware, spam, viruses, worms, and pop-ups are and how to dodge them • Make the connection — hook up DSL or cable Internet, configure a modem, and activate security software • Seek and find — locate almost anything by using Google™ or Bing™, browse directories, find people, and get facts from Wikipedia • Just hangin’ out — keep in touch via e-mail, instant messaging, and chat features • Here I am — share your thoughts on a blog, post a video on YouTube®, or join the Twitter flock • New ways to browse — check out the newest features of Internet Explorer®, Firefox®, and Google Chrome™ • Media magic — discover iTunes®, Internet radio, online movies, hulu.com, podcasts, and more • Enlarge your horizons — explore virtual worlds and play games against competitors from around the globe The Internet Levine Levine Young 12th Edition spine=.864” Start with FREE Cheat Sheets Cheat Sheets include • Checklists • Charts • Common Instructions • And Other Good Stuff! Get Smart at Dummies.com Dummies.com makes your life easier with 1,000s of answers on everything from removing wallpaper to using the latest version of Windows. Check out our • Videos • Illustrated Articles • Step-by-Step Instructions Plus, each month you can win valuable prizes by entering our Dummies.com sweepstakes. * Want a weekly dose of Dummies? Sign up for Newsletters on • Digital Photography • Microsoft Windows & Office • Personal Finance & Investing • Health & Wellness • Computing, iPods & Cell Phones • eBay • Internet • Food, Home & Garden Find out “HOW” at Dummies.com *Sweepstakes not currently available in all countries; visit Dummies.com for official rules. Get More and Do More at Dummies.com® To access the Cheat Sheet created specifically for this book, go to www.dummies.com/cheatsheet/internet spine=.864” The Internet FOR DUMmIES ‰ 12TH EDITION by John R. Levine Margaret Levine Young The Internet FOR DUMmIES ‰ 12TH EDITION The Internet For Dummies®, 12th Edition Published by Wiley Publishing, Inc. 111 River Street Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774 www.wiley.com Copyright © 2010 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana Published by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana Published simultaneously in Canada No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except as permit- ted under Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, fax (978) 646-8600. 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Library of Congress Control Number: 2009942329 ISBN: 978-0-470-56095-2 Manufactured in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 About the Authors John R. Levine was a member of a computer club in high school — before high school students, or even high schools, had computers — where he met Theodor H. Nelson, the author of Computer Lib/Dream Machines and the inventor of hypertext, who reminded us that computers should not be taken seriously and that everyone can and should understand and use computers. John wrote his first program in 1967 on an IBM 1130 (a computer somewhat less powerful than your typical modern digital wristwatch, only more difficult to use). He became an official system administrator of a networked computer at Yale in 1975. He began working part-time — for a computer company, of course — in 1977 and has been in and out of the computer and network biz ever since. He got his company on Usenet (the Internet’s worldwide bulletin- board system) early enough that it appears in a 1982 Byte magazine article on a map of Usenet, which then was so small that the map fit on half a page. Although John used to spend most of his time writing software, now he mostly writes books (including UNIX For Dummies and Internet Secrets, both published by Wiley, and Windows Vista: the Complete Reference, published by Osborne / McGraw-Hill) because it’s more fun and he can do so at home in the tiny village of Trumansburg, New York, where in his spare time he was the mayor for several years (yes, really, see www.Trumansburg.ny.us) and can play with his daughter when he’s supposed to be writing. John also does a fair amount of public speaking. (Go to www.johnlevine.com to see where he’ll be.) He holds a B.A. and a Ph.D. in computer science from Yale University, but please don’t hold that against him. In high school, Margaret Levine Young was in the same computer club as her big brother, John. She stayed in the field throughout college against her better judgment and despite John’s presence as a graduate student in the computer science department. Margy graduated from Yale and went on to become one of the first PC managers in the early 1980s at Columbia Pictures, where she rode the elevator with big stars whose names she wouldn’t dream of dropping here. Since then, Margy has co-authored more than 25 computer books about topics that include the Internet, UNIX, WordPerfect, Microsoft Access, and (stab from the past) PC-File and Javelin, including The Internet For Dummies Quick Reference and UNIX For Dummies (both published by Wiley), Windows Vista: The Complete Reference, and Internet: The Complete Reference (both pub- lished by Osborne/McGraw-Hill). She met her future husband, Jordan, in the R.E.S.I.S.T.O.R.S. (that computer club we mentioned). Her other passion is her children, along with music, Unitarian Universalism, reading, knitting, gardening (you can never grow too much garlic), and anything to do with eating. She lives in Vermont (see www.gurus.org/margy for some scenery) and works as a software engineer for the Unitarian Universalist Association (www.uua.org). Please visit both authors online at net.gurus.org. Dedication John dedicates his part of the book (the particularly lame jokes) to Sarah Willow, who surprises and delights him every day, and to Tonia, now and always. Margy dedicates this book to her niece Alana Margaret Schumb. And, of course, to Jordan, Meg, and Zac. Authors’ Acknowledgments We thank Kenneth Sutton for information about Second Life, Zac Young and James Curran for information about online games, and Kasey Melski for help with World of Warcraft. Mark Enochs hustled us through the editorial process despite our attempts to drag it out while (no doubt at great personal cost) making us look like better writers than we are. Rebecca Whitney is the editor for whom we get down on our knees and beg when we begin each update to this book. Steve Hayes gets us organized, which is no easy task. Thanks also to the rest of the gang at Wiley Publishing, especially those listed on the Publisher’s Acknowledgments page. Margy thanks Jordan for holding everything together. We all thank Bill Gladstone at Waterside Productions for encouragement. The entire contents of this book were edited and submitted to the publisher using the Web — practicing what we preach. We thank our Internet providers: Finger Lakes Technologies Group (Trumansburg, N.Y. Hi, Paul!), Lightlink (Ithaca, N.Y. Hi, Homer!), and Shoreham.net (Shoreham, Vermont. Hi, Don and Jim!). Finally, thanks to all the smarties (we wouldn’t say wiseacres) who sent us comments on the previous editions and helped make this one better. If you have ideas, comments, or complaints, about the book, whisk them to us at